i need to know about these historic people

[macwilkin]

I've probably told this story before but it bears repeating when discussing researching history...and the librarians amongst us will, no doubt, get a kick out of it.

A teacher of mine once related the tale of Mungo Diddylyyp, the famous Welsh theatre critic of the Eighteenth Century. You've never heard of ol' Mungo?

This all took place at a certain Midwestern University in a large Midwestern City. Faced with one of those assignments from hell and being obliged to cite at least three PRIMARY sources on theatre in Wales in the Eighteenth Century, my old instructor found himself stymied. His buddy (or should I say accomplice) came up with a masterful plan: they would cook up a phoney primary source...now we all know that this has been done before...it was even being done in the Age Before The Internet (also known as B.G. or Before Google). The twist was that the buddy had a buddy who worked in the University library and the logic was this: no professor ever actually checked a student's sources personally...he assigned a grad student to do the grunt work. The grad student wasn't going to actually check the stacks for the book...he would only check the card catalog (remember those?) to see if the book had a card. Now here's the nasty part...just to ensure that even if the grad student got ambitious and actualy was going to check the stacks, the one area that was almost impossible for any body to get access to was the rare book vault.

Thus was born a card for the catalog for "Playes of Wayles" authored by none other than the intrepid (and non-existant) Mungo Diddylyyp...a rare, one of a kind manuscript that was locked securely in the rare book vault. The card was surreptitiously placed in the card catalog by the buddy who worked in the library.

The ruse went off without a hitch...the papers were submitted, graded and the culprits (both of them, actually) went on to graduate and teach at my high school.

...and the best part? Years later it was deemed necessary to do an inventory of the rare book collection and it was found that Mungo's "Playes of Wayles" was missing and assumed stolen. A modest reward was offered for its return. My teacher and his buddy were tempted to sit down, write the book, return it and claim the reward but I guess that they finally figgerred that it would be too much trouble.

Primary sources...how many do ya want?

Best

AA

:mrgreen:

Reminds me of the old MASH episode involving "Captain Jonathan Tuttle".

T.

[Raptor]

Check out "William Wallace: Brave Heart" by James MacKay. He uses contemporary Scottish & English manuscripts to cross-check Blind Harry, & has probably got as close as anyone (& closer than a few!) to what actually happened.