Paige Shiver on London myths of unity and division, Britain’s deepening division, and what the old stories know about a city of many tribes.
London has always been a city of many tribes, many villages swallowed into one sprawl, and its folklore has always grappled with the question of whether the many can ever truly be one, a question that feels especially urgent as I study the myths this week against the news of a deepening division.
The Myth Of The One City
The folklore of London is full of attempts to imagine the city as a single entity, a unity with a single character and a single soul, and these attempts have always been complicated by the obvious truth that London is not one thing but many, a collection of villages and tribes and districts each with its own character, its own loyalties, its own sense of itself. The myth of the one London is always in tension with the reality of the many Londons, and the folklore lives in that tension.
And I read the news that Britain is more divided than during Brexit, with experts recommending everyone argue more calmly online, and I thought about how the city’s ancient folklore has always known what the experts are only now rediscovering: that unity is not the absence of division but the holding of division within a larger story. London was never one thing. London survived not by eliminating its tribes but by weaving them into a shared myth large enough to contain their differences.
What The City’s Folklore Knows
The scholars who study London’s myths, the people at institutions like the Museum of London, understand that the city’s endurance has always depended on its capacity to hold its many tribes within a shared story, to be many and one simultaneously, to contain division within a larger unity. The folklore of the one London was never a denial of the many Londons; it was the binding story that allowed the many to cohere without ceasing to be many.
This is the wisdom the experts miss with their prescription of calmer argument. The division is not the problem; London has always been divided into its tribes and villages. The problem is the fraying of the binding story, the larger myth that allowed the many to feel themselves also one. You cannot argue your way to unity. You can only tell, and retell, the shared story large enough to hold the difference.
The Knightsbridge Tribe
Knightsbridge is its own London tribe, its own village with its own character and loyalties, as distinct from the East End or the southern suburbs as a foreign country, and living here I am acutely aware of the city’s tribal reality, the many Londons that the myth of the one London must somehow bind. The division the experts lament is, in part, simply London being London, many tribes in one sprawl, and the answer is not to eliminate the tribes but to renew the binding story.
The Story Retold
I closed my study of London’s myths tonight thinking that the city’s ancient folklore holds the answer the experts cannot find, that London has always been many and survived by becoming, through story, also one, that unity is not the absence of division but the holding of division within a larger shared myth. The experts prescribe calm. The folklore prescribes story, the binding narrative large enough to contain the many tribes, the myth of the one London that never denied the many Londons but wove them together. Britain is divided, as London has always been divided, and the way through is the way the city has always found: not the elimination of difference but the patient retelling of the story large enough to hold it.
Many Tribes, One Story
London has always been many and survived by becoming, through story, also one, holding its tribes and villages within a shared myth large enough to contain their differences. Unity was never the absence of division; it was the binding narrative that let the many cohere without ceasing to be many. The folklore knew this long before the experts rediscovered it.
The scholars at the Museum of London understand the city’s endurance as its capacity to hold many tribes within a shared story, to be many and one at once.
And a state forever reorganising rather than binding is failing at exactly the work the folklore prescribes, the patient retelling of the shared story large enough to hold the difference, because you cannot reorganise your way to cohesion any more than you can argue your way to it; you can only tell, and retell, the binding myth.
I closed my study of London’s myths tonight thinking that the city’s ancient folklore holds the answer the experts cannot find, that London has always been many and survived by becoming, through story, also one, that unity is not the absence of division but the holding of division within a larger shared myth. The experts prescribe calm. The folklore prescribes story, the binding narrative large enough to contain the many tribes, the myth of the one London that never denied the many Londons but wove them together. Britain is divided, as London has always been divided, and the way through is the city’s ancient way: not the elimination of difference but the patient retelling of the story large enough to hold it.
For more, see The Poke.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
