Note 94 — BOOK III THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Reading edition
It is suggested in the text that blind men became bards: Myres says that bards were (artificially) blinded to stop them from going elsewhere—the tribe wanted to keep them. The poetic touch is that “the Muses” blind the poet. Not a bit of it. (Homer, being a blind bard, describes things by sound—the twanging arrow, the far-thundering sea, the noise of the chariot going through the gate. He is audile, not visual.)—E. B.
But in this matter note the adjectives in the passage quoted here from the Iliad; they are all visual.—G. H. M.
Mr. L. Lloyd, of the experimental station at Cheshunt, tells me he has seen in Rhodesia the musician and singer of a troupe of native dancers who had been blinded by his chief to prevent him leaving the village.—H. G. W.