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Authors: E. K. Johnston
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the Beatlesâ music might incur.
And that was before you got to their hair.
The end result was, of course, the British Invasion, which saw other bands with varying musical styles become popular in North America, drowning out the screams of the traditionalists, who insisted that too much music and not enough dragon slaying could only result in long-term damage to social order. If only, was the common lament, Buddy Hollyâs airplane had not been beset by dragons while he and a few other bards and their dragon slayers were flying over Iowa. Then, just maybe, the American music scene would have been strong enough to stall the Brits.
As is often the case, the postmodernists were almost entirely incorrect.
The true decline of dracono-bardism was not the result of the Beatles or the Stones or the fact that Buddy Holly died a few years before anyone in North America heard of John Lennon. It was the not the fault of any one thing, though history is a sensational medium that tends to latch onto one idea and pretend it is responsible for everything. By the time the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, the traditional relationship between a dragon slayer and his or her bard was already under significant strain.
âAnd if anyone ever argues that point with you,â Lottie said, âAsk them the name of Buddy Hollyâs dragon slayer.â
It took me more than fifteen minutes to find it on the Internet, and even then, no one seemed to be in agreement over how the dragon slayerâs name was spelled.
Anyway, what really happened was that in 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker published a story that almost everyone knew but few people had ever actually read.
Dracula
and the varioussparkling and over-romanticized versions of it that followed, was written in the style of a bard even though Stoker himself had no connections to the dragon slaying world. The popularity of the book, coupled with the already infamous story of Vlad the Impaler, served to foment distrust between dragons slayers and the general publicâand also resentment, as, for the first time, the bards started to operate separately from their subjects. The end result was an entirely new canon of dragon slayer stories where, instead of being the hero or heroine, the dragon slayer was relegated to being at best a creepy stalker, if not the outright villain.
There were a few exceptions. Canada managed to retain a portion of its traditional music, largely thanks to a statute that mandated 40 percent of everything on the radio had to be written by a Canadian or feature a dragon slayer. This allowed for the success of songs like âThe Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,â which told the story of the attempted rescue-by-dragon-slayer of a tankerâs crew after they were attacked in the middle of Lake Superior. Even though the tragedy resulted in the death of everyone involved, and Gordon Lightfoot, the composer of the song, was no more a bard than Stoker was, it still clung to the old heroic style.
The other exception was, of course, Lottie Thorskard. She had been the first dragon slayer in more than half a century to actively play up her ancestry (Norwegian) instead of focusing on the country of her birth. Her critics said that this could only damage the reputations of Canadian dragon slayers, but the effect was that, thanks her enormous success and fame, stories and songs based on Beowulf and his ilk grew popular again, though never quite eclipsing the popularityof the Stoker knockoffs, largely because Americans had more buying power.
This was the landscape as I entered it: unbalanced and fraught with the potential to blow up in everyoneâs faces. There had already been some casualties. In 2003, the Dixie Chicks had been eviscerated for their stand against American dragon slaying policy, though they, like Lightfoot, were not actual bards. A few years later, Lady Gaga, also not a bard, had taken to the stage with elaborate shows and
And that was before you got to their hair.
The end result was, of course, the British Invasion, which saw other bands with varying musical styles become popular in North America, drowning out the screams of the traditionalists, who insisted that too much music and not enough dragon slaying could only result in long-term damage to social order. If only, was the common lament, Buddy Hollyâs airplane had not been beset by dragons while he and a few other bards and their dragon slayers were flying over Iowa. Then, just maybe, the American music scene would have been strong enough to stall the Brits.
As is often the case, the postmodernists were almost entirely incorrect.
The true decline of dracono-bardism was not the result of the Beatles or the Stones or the fact that Buddy Holly died a few years before anyone in North America heard of John Lennon. It was the not the fault of any one thing, though history is a sensational medium that tends to latch onto one idea and pretend it is responsible for everything. By the time the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, the traditional relationship between a dragon slayer and his or her bard was already under significant strain.
âAnd if anyone ever argues that point with you,â Lottie said, âAsk them the name of Buddy Hollyâs dragon slayer.â
It took me more than fifteen minutes to find it on the Internet, and even then, no one seemed to be in agreement over how the dragon slayerâs name was spelled.
Anyway, what really happened was that in 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker published a story that almost everyone knew but few people had ever actually read.
Dracula
and the varioussparkling and over-romanticized versions of it that followed, was written in the style of a bard even though Stoker himself had no connections to the dragon slaying world. The popularity of the book, coupled with the already infamous story of Vlad the Impaler, served to foment distrust between dragons slayers and the general publicâand also resentment, as, for the first time, the bards started to operate separately from their subjects. The end result was an entirely new canon of dragon slayer stories where, instead of being the hero or heroine, the dragon slayer was relegated to being at best a creepy stalker, if not the outright villain.
There were a few exceptions. Canada managed to retain a portion of its traditional music, largely thanks to a statute that mandated 40 percent of everything on the radio had to be written by a Canadian or feature a dragon slayer. This allowed for the success of songs like âThe Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,â which told the story of the attempted rescue-by-dragon-slayer of a tankerâs crew after they were attacked in the middle of Lake Superior. Even though the tragedy resulted in the death of everyone involved, and Gordon Lightfoot, the composer of the song, was no more a bard than Stoker was, it still clung to the old heroic style.
The other exception was, of course, Lottie Thorskard. She had been the first dragon slayer in more than half a century to actively play up her ancestry (Norwegian) instead of focusing on the country of her birth. Her critics said that this could only damage the reputations of Canadian dragon slayers, but the effect was that, thanks her enormous success and fame, stories and songs based on Beowulf and his ilk grew popular again, though never quite eclipsing the popularityof the Stoker knockoffs, largely because Americans had more buying power.
This was the landscape as I entered it: unbalanced and fraught with the potential to blow up in everyoneâs faces. There had already been some casualties. In 2003, the Dixie Chicks had been eviscerated for their stand against American dragon slaying policy, though they, like Lightfoot, were not actual bards. A few years later, Lady Gaga, also not a bard, had taken to the stage with elaborate shows and
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