Second-Hand Sources

So why would you want your history second-hand?

Most books of history are secondary source, written by people not of the era that they write of, drawing on the sources of that era. And it can be of great use to the writer.

For one thing, historians can dedicate the time to go through all the primary source,¹ and often those sources that are inaccessible, whether from lack of translation or any other cause. Or simply because the mass of primary source would be too great.

A book about colonial Massachusetts, while discussing weddings, tells how when the legislature passed a rationing law during a war, it banned all sorts of cakes, cookies, and other such baked goods -- except wedding cakes.  

A book about nineteenth century France can recount how Fenimore Cooper found the French roads fully as bad as the worst in the United States, on the frontier.

A book about first century Christian and pagan attitude toward children can glean all the sermons on "becoming like a little child" and recount how they included children's lack of greed and awareness of social status, because children, offered a coin or an apple, take the apple, and the children of slaves and the children of the rich play together freely.

Archaeological evidence is even less accessible to the general public. The chief information on lead "curse" tablets thrown into the spring in a shrine in Great Britain during the Roman era is, in fact, the tablets themselves. It is much easier to read accounts and learn that these were all done in excellent hand-writing, even though they prayed that the goddess avenge small thefts that were very, and presumably stemmed from the hands of the poor, for whom these were a hardship. Archaeologists conclude that it must have been respectable behavior, praying for vengeance; the poor must have been freely asking the professionals at the shrine to help them do it properly.

Another aspect is that they can do the statistical analysis. Because people's impressions are frequently very far off, claims that something happens often or infrequently should not be trusted -- in either primary or secondary sources -- unless you can see the figures, which are much more probable in secondary sources. All the preachers, whether medieval or modern, who denounced May Day festivities for sexual license between the unmarried were actually wrong. Reading through all the baptismal records of many London churches, recording when illegitimate babies were baptized, and doing a statistical analysis of them turned this up. The month in which illegitimate babies were disproportionately conceived was August, not May; May had no more than the average month; and this is shown nine months later by increase in their baptisms.

Statistical analysis is actually one aspect of the other advantage of secondary source: perspective.²

Not always, of course. Immortal in my memory is reading an author on how a cunning woman of early modern England waited until her husband was in bed before she worked something for healing an illness.  She discusses several possibilities, noting that the law against witchcraft had been repealed in that time, but it does not even seem to have occurred to her as a possibility that the husband thought that what she did was witchcraft, and wrong. So you have to take care.

Still, a Victorian work on folklore is primary source for Victorian views on folklore, or at least the Victorian author's views. If it contains grave and repeated comments that this fairy tale is really a solar myth -- that Sleeping Beauty is a solar myth, with the princess representing the sun and her sleep the night; that Hansel and Gretel is a solar myth, with the blond children (who aren't blond in the Grimms' tale) vanquishing the night and recovering the sun in the form of the witch's gold; that The Frog King is a solar myth with the golden ball that the frog retrieves -- you may wonder how seriously to take it. There having being crackpots in all generations.

A good secondary source on the subject will assure you that, yes, for a time, it was a very widespread belief, held by many noted folklorists. It was so widespread that a writer set out to prove that, by the same standards of evidence they were using to prove many fairy tales and legends were really solar myths, it could be proven that Napoleon Bonaparte was a solar myth.

For that kind of perspective, there's no real practical replacement for secondary sources.

Indeed, good secondary sources are a good starting point for reading primary source for a given era. The bibliography, the works they discuss in the text, give you a pointer. In particular, it may point you to what is more useful and less -- crackpot in a given era.

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2. Like this