Continuing inspiration from Sherri Olson’s marvelous book on English peasants in 1300.
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Court sessions were participatory performances.
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Many ears are listening to a story that is being worked out as it goes along, a story that is searching for assent as it unfolds, involving all participants in the work of achieving consensus, and bound therefore to observe its terms.
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Unlike modern jury service, every responsible adult was required to participate. There were penalties for missing court. Universal participation in a formalized ritual enabled a wider variety of personalities, a crucial element of Natural Law.
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Most times, such extreme measures as expulsion or confinement were not necessary to promote social order. In fact, village society was highly tolerant of the nonconformists in its midst because they were the norm, not the exception. The long-term stability despite nonconformity suggests the invidivual’s internalization of a body of ideas, many of them articulated and enforced in the court, where performance, ritual and storytelling helped to integrate the life experiences of all members.
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Resonates with my experience in two places. In Enid I felt like a citizen, able to talk with anyone from mobsters to ministers to mayors. Enid also tolerated and cultivated its oddballs, and some of them were brilliant. When I moved to Spokane in 1990 I was still operating in citizen mode, relatively social and friendly by introvert standards, willing and able to talk with anyone. It didn’t work. I never felt like a citizen here, always felt like an outsider, even after 35 years.
Why the difference? Speculating… Enid was a mix of misfits from the start. The Cherokee Strip was the last frontier, the last exit for repeatedly filtered outcasts. Enid had no special reason for starting in that location, no natural port or terminal. People landed there for a variety of reasons and managed to work together for a common goal, as the peasants did.
Spokane was a portage, a place where people had to pause between parts of the river, thus creating a business opportunity. But why were they on the river? They weren’t desperately seeking a new life or rejected by the old life. They were carrying gold to the sea. They were already rich.
After the start, both cities grew primarily as railroad junctions, but the distinction of mixed outcasts vs top-down aristocracy continued.
How did the mix develop in England? Maybe because England was a mix of Angles and Danes and Celts and French, the survivors of repeated invasions. All groups mixed into the language and culture.
Polistra's Mill 