ABSTRACT
In her prologue to the Turner essay collection On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, Edith Turner recalls an incident in Victor Turner’s early childhood:
To explain Vic’s ear for social life as a play, it would help to go back to his childhood. His mother was an actress, and used to rehearse her lines in front of his high chair. His head was full of lines and verses of poetry. Once when his mother took him to the dairy for milk, where a crowd of respectable Glasgow matrons in coal scuttle hats were waiting to be served, wee Victor suddenly shrilled out: “For lust of knowing what should not be known, we take the golden road to Samarkand!” All the coal scuttle hats turned around. “Lust? Wha’s the wee laddie talkin’ aboot? Lust?” His mother got him out of there pretty quick. (Turner 1985:5)
