Inaccuracies in deaf folklore

A short piece taken from the introduction to a history book - Britain's Deaf Heritage

The main drawback with many books about hearing people was that the deaf subjects who made them so famous scarcely got a mention: sometimes there was no mention at all.

In other cases, hearing people have in the past been guilty of embellishing events so that they 'saw' things as they wanted to see them, not what was reality. Into this category falls the story of St. John of Beverley.

In the Venerable Bede's Chronicles written about 685 A.D. St. John took a paternal interest in a number of sorely-afflicted persons so that he might minister to their wants. One of these was a youth who was unable to speak. On one occasion, John is said to have ordered the youth to thrust forth his tongue and show it to him (John) upon which John made the sign of the cross. This having been done, the youth was told to draw his tongue back and say 'Gae' (an old Saxon equivalent of Yeah).

Immediately the youth's tongue was loosened and he said what he had been ordered to say. St. John then added the names of the letters, 'say A', he said A: 'say B', he said this too, and so on through the alphabet, then some syllables and words. All through that day and the following night, the youth is said to have not ceased talking.

On the basis of this story St. John of Beverley is claimed to be the first teacher of the deaf: indeed, he is regarded as the Patron Saint of deaf people and there have been schools and deaf clubs called after him. In the years between the two Wars there existed an organisation of clergymen called the Guild of St. John of Beverley which severely retarded the status and the development of the British Deaf Community.

However, if we care to examine the Venerable Bede's chronicles closely, at no time did Bede ever use the word 'surdus' (Latin for deaf). The word that Bede did use was 'mutus' (Latin for mute/dumb). This youth was never deaf at all; what he had was, in  modern day terminology, a speech impediment. One does not have to be deaf to have a speech impediment.

So right at the beginning the scene was set for centuries of misunderstanding about deaf people and deafness which has persisted to the present day.

Inaccuracies in deaf folklore and emotive reporting in magazines for deaf people added to the difficulty in trying to be factual.