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Game and Guns

by Tag Barbarason

The conversion of Europe to Christianity was primarily an economic and political event with spiritual consequences, not the reverse as it is often portrayed. The myth is that the common folk joyously embracing a creed which gave respite from the cruelties of life and hope for a better life in the hereafter. The reality was somewhat different. In its Roman beginnings most Christians were slaves , just as most people were slaves. However the real growth of Christianity took place after rulers started to impose it on their subjects, starting with the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century. Nation after nation eventually followed suit, in virtually every case the conversion started with the King and the nobility: Clovis, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Olaf; these men all imposed Christianity as a state religion and are considered national heroes today. Sometimes the conversion was peaceful and gradual, as in the case of Alfred and Clovis, other times the conversion was violent and sudden as with Charlemagne and Olaf. Always the conversion was accompanied by profound changes in the political and economic life of the people, the country folk, the "heathen".

Christianity's establishment of the feudal economic /political system was merely a culmination of a process that began thousands of years earlier when the first agriculturalists became easy prey for warrior bands. This process was the evolution of government from mere extortionism to extortionism and micro-management. Religion was and is the ideology of government. (In fact, Hinduism and Islam are governmental systems even more explicitly than Christianity.)

Christianity would provide the ideological basis , the "Divine Right of Kings" , for feudalism, the consolidation of tribes into nations and the taming of tribesmen into subjects, farmers into peasants. From the Kings' point of view, there were nothing but advantages to the new order. Embracing the Church brought access to powerful technologies, writing and mathematics, increased opportunity for trade, and more importantly, taxation.

The land was no longer owned by a tribe or family. It was a fief granted to a Duke or Baron by the king . Instead of peasants owning the land, the land owned them. The peasantry was disarmed. The peasants became shorter, less well nourished as Lord and Church took steadily more produce for themselves, and to feed their monks and soldiers and soldiers' horses .Indeed , the image of the jolly overstuffed friar lives on in the folk memory to this day..

Fishing, hunting and trapping became the sole prerogative of the nobility. (Hunting remained the favorite pastime of twentieth century Euro bigwigs such as Tito, Brezhnev, Goering and Ceceascu .) As recently as the nineteenth century, poaching a frog or rabbit was a capital offense in Great Britain. Of course, that didn't stop the common folk from devoting a good deal of effort into outwitting the game keeper, and providing nutritious food for the family table.

With the prohibition the hunt came the prohibition of hunting weaponry, as well as traps snares and such. Of course the disarming of the common folk had political ramifications, and made any challenge to the feudal system virtually impossible. (Of course , peasant revolts still occurred from time to time) As weapons technology improved, the advantages of the nobility became more pronounced, but that didn't stop the ruling classes from imposing even stricter weapons control policies. Where the populace was to remain armed for military purposes, as in England, the yeoman's weapon was the quarterstaff, effective against armed invaders, useless as a hunting tool or in guerrilla warfare.

Despite the fact that many of America's earliest English and Celtic settlers came here in some form of thralldom, most on coming here found soon themselves in a situation where they could carry weapons and hunt, activities that had been forbidden many for a thousand years. Of course with the settlement of America the gun had come into its own, and the freedoms to own a gun to hunt and for self-defense was widely practiced and deeply appreciated. The right to own a weapon was extremely important to our forefathers- that's whay they bequeathen to us the Second Amendment.

To this day hunting and weaponry (especially firearms) are a key element in both American Folklore and Folkway, the nominal Christianity of most Americans notwithstanding. I personally knew of backwoodsmen in southern Indiana in the sixties who subsisted by largely by hunting and gathering ginseng.

Attempts to eliminate hunting and gun ownership for self defense are (unfortunately often only dimly perceived) assaults on the Folkway and thus, the Folk.

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