“It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken.”
– John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, 1875-1940, Scottish novelist, Former Governor General of Canada
Report: Grandpa Just Walks Like That Now – The Onion
This article forgets to add that once in this condition the paleface American will be hunted by Dindu savages and eventually beaten into a coma with his own cane—and the world will look the other way.
When Your Job Sucks
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I suggest you look up Nart saga from the Caucausus. It is a legend common to Caucasus tribes, but apparently it started with Ossetians, who are descendants of the ancient Alans.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alans
Alans from what I have read, were the kind of heroes you are now describing. They were to a large degree matriarchial. Not in the sense that women ruled, but in the sense that they generally had no contact with their fathers. As a results, they considered people who survived to old age to be cowards. Brave men died young. Old men were maltreated. (This is not necessarily 100% true, my sources were a bit enthusiastic about early matriarchy).
See Meletinsky,Origins of Heroic Epic. Also Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History Vol 31
tertullian.org/fathers/ammianus_31_book31.htm
"Nearly all the Alani are men of great stature and beauty; their hair is somewhat yellow, their eyes are terribly fierce; the lightness of their armour renders them rapid in their movements; and they are in every respect equal to the Huns, only more civilized in their food and their manner of life. They plunder and hunt as far as the Sea of Azov and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, ravaging also Armenia and Media.
22. And as ease is a delightful thing to men of a quiet and placid disposition, so danger and war are a pleasure to the Alani, and among them that man is called happy who has lost his life in battle. For those who grow old, or who go out of the world from accidental sicknesses, they pursue with bitter reproaches as degenerate and cowardly. Nor is there anything of which they boast with more pride than of having killed a man: and the most glorious spoils they esteem the scalps which they have torn from the heads of those whom they have slain, which they put as trappings and ornaments on their war-horses.
23. Nor is there any temple or shrine seen in their country, nor even any cabin thatched with straw, their only idea of religion being to plunge a naked sword into the ground with barbaric ceremonies, and then they worship that with great respect, as Mars, the presiding deity of the regions over which they wander."
infogalactic.com/info/Nart_saga
Colarusso, J., ed. and trans.: Nart Sagas from the Caucasus
"The Geat Nart went among the lawgivers, who were gathered in the Great House, and said "I am worth nothing anymore. The people no longer respect me. I have grown old, I am no longer of any use to you. (...) Let them make a bgi chest and place me inside it. Then throw me into the sea." (...) As he was returning home, however, he came upon a gang of youths. "This ugly old man is always going before the lawgivers." they said. "Let's throw him into the sea and see what he'll do!".