Rabbi Isaacs examines the treasure-trove of popular beliefs, customs, and superstitions that exist side-by-side with "normative Judaism."

Authentic vampire tales exist in Transylvanian folklore. Yet the Transylvanian vampire is nothing like the bloodthirsty Count of Bram Stoker's imagination or the romantic hero of popular fiction. The Romanian tradition comes from the villages, reflecting the norms of peasant life and wisdom embedded in age-old communities. This book consists of 21 narratives created by the author, developed from the brief accounts recorded by local amateur anthropologists and cultural historians from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The goal is to capture the major themes found in the existing sources, retrieving the narrative thread and bringing the stories back to life. The book also includes translations of 17 brief folk stories about Vlad Tepes, known as Dracula. Contrary to the prevailing fictive image, these stories portray Vlad as a wise although strict ruler and a proud defender of his country's autonomy. An introduction discusses the Transylvanian village and its rich folk traditions, making explicit the comparison to the historic and to the fictional Dracula. An interlude analyses the characteristics of the Transylvanian vampire, including village superstitions regarding how to recognise and destroy one. Transylvania deserves commemoration of its own vampire stories, rather than those artificially created for it.

A magnificent exploration of Scotland's legendary past. cotland's rich past and varied landscape have inspired an extraordinary array of legends and beliefs, and in The Lore of Scotland Jennifer Westwood and Sophia Kingshill bring together many of the finest and most intriguing: stories of heroes and bloody feuds, tales of giants, fairies, and witches, and accounts of local customs and traditions. Their range extends right across the country, from the Borders with their haunting ballads, via Glasgow, site of St Mungo's miracles, to the fateful battlefield of Culloden, and finally to the Shetlands, home of the seal-people.
More than simply retelling these stories, The Lore of Scotland explores their origins, showing how and when they arose and investigating what basis -- if any -- they have in historical fact. In the process, it uncovers the events that inspired Shakespeare's Macbeth, probes the claim that Mary King's Close is the most haunted street in Edinburgh, and examines the surprising truth behind the fame of the MacCrimmons, Skye's unsurpassed bagpipers. Moreover, it reveals how generations of Picts, Vikings, Celtic saints and Presbyterian reformers shaped the myriad tales that still circulate, and, from across the country, it gathers together legends of such renowned figures as Sir William Wallace, St Columba, and the great warrior Fingal. The result is a thrilling journey through Scotland's legendary past and an endlessly fascinating account of the traditions and beliefs that play such an important role in its heritage.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this remarkable book, Clyde Ford restores to us the lost treasure of African mythology, bringing to life the ancient tales and showing why they matter so much to us today.

African myths convey the perennial wisdom of humanity: the creation of the world, the hero's journey, our relationship with nature, death, and resurrection.  From the Ashanti comes the moving account of the grief-stricken Kwasi Benefo's journey to the underworld to seek his beloved wives.  From Uganda we learn of the legendary Kintu, who won the love of a goddess and created a nation from a handful of isolated clans.  The Congo's epic hero Mwindo is the sacred warrior who shows us the path each person must travel to discover his true destiny.

These and other important African myths show us the history of African Americans in a new light--as a hero's journey, a courageous passage to a hard-won victory.  The Hero with an African Face enriches us all by restoring this vital tradition to the world.

Half-man-half-myth, the werewolf has over the years infiltrated popular culture in many strange and varied shapes, from Gothic horror to the 'body horror' films of the 1980s and today's graphic novels. Yet despite enormous critical interest in myths and in monsters, from vampires to cyborgs, the figure of the werewolf has been strangely overlooked. Embodying our primal fears - of anguished masculinity, of 'the beast within' - the werewolf, argues Bourgault du Coudray, has revealed in its various lupine guises radically shifting attitudes to the human psyche. Tracing the werewolf's 'use' by anthropologists and criminologists and shifting interpretations of the figure - from the 'scientific' to the mythological and psychological - Bourgault du Coudray also sees the werewolf in Freud's 'wolf-man' case and the sinister use of wolf imagery in Nazism. "The Curse of the Werewolf" looks finally at the werewolf's revival in contemporary fantasy, finding in this supposedly conservative genre a fascinating new model of the human's relationship to nature. It is a required reading for students of fantasy, myth and monsters. No self-respecting werewolf should be without it.

This book examines the attitudes of tertiary students in Melanesia and Timor-Leste to national identity and key issues of nation-building. Their views are pivotal to understanding the challenges of building a more cohesive sense of national identity and political community in these states. Melanesian countries show a relatively high degree of similarity in their responses to the surveys on national identity carried out by the authors, but with key differences attributable to particular historical, regional or linguistic legacies of colonial rule. The ongoing importance of traditional authority and kastom/adat in conceptions of political community and identity is evident in all four case study sites, and in each case matches indicators of respect for modern state authority. Although different for each site, the authors' findings also illustrate the importance of students' geographical region of origin, language orientation and gender in explaining key differences in attitudes towards national identity. The book demonstrates that strong levels of national identification and pride persist among the future leaders of the countries surveyed, even in the face of ongoing regional and linguistic divisions and weak state capacity, suggesting a strong potential basis for nation-building agendas if wider challenges of democratic performance, service provision and regional development can be addressed over time.

The focus of "Fusion Fashion" is on Orientalism as a sartorial practice, which has to be differentiated from the common knowledge of Orientalism by means of its organization, constitution and reception. The book offers historic as well as systematic perspectives. On the one hand, it compares orientalizing practices in fashion since the Tang Period in China and European Renaissance. On the other hand, it highlights current tendencies of so called "orientalism", "self-orientalism", "occidentalism" in a globalized world. The book covers two time periods: Orientalized fashion practices from the 16th to the beginning of the 20th century, with an emphasis on European "Oriental" practices, and the period beginning in the 1990s up to the present day, with an emphasis on non-Western sartorial practices.

Myths are the expression of a form of knowledge essential to life. Including mainly previously unpublished work by A.M. Hocart the book examines such issues as: Why a queen should not have been married before; why a guest is sacred; why people are believed to have been turned into stone; how money originated. These issues are considered as part of a socio-religious complex embraced in many parts of the world, both East and West. (There are chapters on the UK, India, Sri Lanka, Africa, Fiji, Egypt, and Ancient Greece).

In this sequel to the bestselling Mythos, legendary author and actor Stephen Fry moves from the exploits of the Olympian gods to the deeds of mortal heroes. Perseus. Jason. Atalanta. Theseus. Heracles. Rediscover the thrills, grandeur, and unabashed fun of the Greek myths. Whether recounting a tender love affair or a heroic triumph, Fry's distinctive voice and writing style lend humor and emotion to his fresh yet reverential interpretations that deftly find resonance with our own modern minds and hearts. Illustrated throughout with classical art inspired by the myths, this fresh take on ancient tales invites you to explore a captivating world with a brilliant storyteller as your guide. BELOVED AUTHOR: Stephen Fry is an icon whose signature wit and mellifluous style makes this retelling utterly unique. Fans will love hearing his interpretations as he draws out the humor and pathos in both tender love affairs and heroic battles and discovering each myth's relevance for our own time whether they are familiar with the original Greek myths or not. STUNNING SERIES SEQUEL: The celebrated and internationally bestselling trilogy that begins with Mythos and concludes with Troy continues with Heroes. Fans of the first book will be thrilled to continue the adventure in this compelling sequel. STRIKING GIFT: With a vibrant contemporary design, full-color artwork throughout, and a luxe, foil-stamped jacket, this gorgeous collector's edition makes a superb present. Perfect for: Mythology and history buffs, lovers of ancient Greece, art aficionados, and devoted fans of Stephen Fry Adding to the home library alongside Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, Madeline Miller's Circe or Song of Achilles, and Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes Readers who enjoy timeless stories, from the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales to Egyptian mythology to legends of Greek gods

In Greek mythology the beautiful Narcissus glimpsed his own reflection in the waters of a spring and fell in love. But his was an impossible passion and, filled with despair, he pined away. Over the years the myth has inspired painters, writers, and film directors, as well as philosophers and psychoanalysts. The tragic story of Narcissus, in love with himself, and of Echo, the nymph in love with him, lies at the heart of this collection of essays exploring the origins of the myth and some of its many cultural manifestations and meanings relating to the self and the self's relationship to the other. Through their discussion of the myth and its ramifications, the contributors to this volume broaden our understanding of one of the fundamental myths of Western culture.

Wisdom and Initiation in Gabon: A Philosophical Analysis of Fang Tales, Myths, and Legends is a study of the philosophical significance of Fang mythology and the rituals of Initiation that lead to Wisdom. Bonaventure Mve Ondo argues that Fang tales, myths, and legends are components of the foundation of a worldview that sustains and protects a unique, historical Fang identity. For Mve Ondo, the contemporary challenges to the existence and identity of the Fang require, perhaps more than ever, recognition of the central role of mythology. At an historical moment when Africans are faced with the challenges of westernization, the metaphysics of the Fang, illustrated and preserved by tales, myths, and legends, is a critical element of Fang survival. Mythology is far more than a collection of amusing or awe inspiring stories, they are profoundly important moral lessons for the Fang in their continuing encounters with such contemporary challenges as materialism and, as the "stories" in this book illustrate, the constant struggle to live lives of purpose and meaning. For Mve Ondo, the critical, central issue for the Fang is to focus on the distinction at the heart of his analysis, i.e., the crucial distinction between "to have" and to "to be." The lessons transmitted from generation to generation by these marvelous stories are, Mve Ondo argues, central to living lives that reflect and perpetuate the eternal truths of the Fang experience.

"Scottish Myths and Legends" is an entertaining taste of the feast of stories that Scotland has to offer. Fairy folk, witches, giants, monsters, tales of heroic princes, magic and miraculous feats - all are the stuff of the myths and legends of Scotland. Scotland is a nation made up of many peoples and cultures. This diversity of cultural influence is reflected in Scotland's vast store of myths and legends. This book contains a fascinating selection of these; some recent, some ancient, some obscure in origin and others based (however loosely) on fact. We invite you to revel in engaging tales of selkies, kelpies, glaistigs, fairy queens and changelings; wonder at the mysteries that may be hidden in the depths of Scottish lochs; and, shiver at tales of supernatural disappearances, deadly creatures and grisly deeds, and if you ever meet someone called Sawney Bean, who lived in a cave with his family and ate people - run for your life!

This is Volume XVI of sixteen of the Oriental series looking at Buddhism. Initially published in 1906, this book presents a collection of Tibetan stories connected to Buddhism, taken from Indian sources and translated from the Kah-gyur and are Tibetan versions of Sanskrit writings.

There are many stories featuring the villainous hero Reynard the Fox in many languages told over many centuries, goingback as far as the early 12th century. All these stories are comic and much of the humour depends on parody and satire resulting in mockery, sometimes the subversion of certain kinds of serious literature, of political and religious institutions and practices, of scholarly argument and moralizing, and of popular beliefs and customs. The contributors to this volume, all of them experts in one or more of the Reynard stories and their backgrounds, focus on the transformation of these tales through various media and to what extent they reflect differences in the cultural, class, and generational background of their tellers.

Why did the ancients align their monuments so precisely with the stars? What were the practical and symbolic reasons behind these mysterious configurations? From the author of "The Orion Mystery," the best-selling book that introduced the revolutionary star-correlation theory about the Giza pyramids, "The Egypt Code" reveals an amazing Grand Unified Plan behind the legendary temples of upper Egypt.

Robert Bauval, one of the world's most prominent and controversial Egyptologists, completes his groundbreaking investigation of astronomy as related to Egyptian monuments and related religious texts. "The Egypt Code" revisits the Pyramid Age and the Old Kingdom, proposing a vast sky-ground correlation for the Memphite-Heliopolis region, and presenting the possibility of a grand plan spanning three thousand years of Pharaonic civilization and involving pyramids and major temple sites along the Nile.

The central idea of the book is that the cosmic order, which the ancients referred to as "Maat," was comprised of the observable cycles of the sun and stars, in particular the star Sirius, and that the changes that took place due to the precession of the equinoxes and the so-called Sothic Cycle are reflected in the orientation and location of religious sites.

Born in Egypt and having lived there and elsewhere in the Middle East for much of his life, Robert Bauval has published several papers linking the pyramids with astronomy, and his findings have been presented at the British Museum. He has also written three books with best-selling author Graham Hancock ("Message of the Sphinx," "Talisman," and "The Mars Mystery").

Anthropology from Asian Missiological Insights embraces and incorporates a combination of practical experiences, useful strategies, and grounded theories. Readers, regardless of their cultural background, will acquire new practical tools for missions. Man Soo (Abraham) Mok insightfully uses anthropological issues to examine folk beliefs, customs, and commitment. In addition, the author analyzes Korean culture to help readers grasp how the gospel took root in Korea - as it might have happened in any other culture.

This book examines film versions of Irish myth, lore, and legend, concentrating particularly on stories which encompass the life journey of the hero, as proposed by Carl Jung and adapted by Joseph Campbell. After establishing the usefulness of film as cultural critique, the author provides intertextual and comparative readings of a number of films which follow a hero's journey. The stages of this journey include the child's struggle to achieve identity and become a responsible member of the community, the adult's ability to move beyond the self and fall in love with another, and the community member's willingness to sacrifice self in the service of Ireland. In addition, the study examines the lore of matchmaking and the communal uses of legend creation, as well as providing an ironic reading of the heroic journey through an exploration of the contemporary anti-hero. The films analysed include Into the West, The Secret of Roan Inish, In America, The Quiet Man, The Matchmaker, Michael Collins, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Veronica Guerin, and In Bruges.

National myths are now seriously questioned in a number of societies. In the West, for instance, a number of factors have combined to destabilise the symbolic foundation of nations and collective identities. As a result, the diagnosis of a deep cultural crisis has become commonplace. Indeed, who today has not heard about the erosion of common values or the undermining of social cohesion? But to efficiently address this issue, do we know enough about the nature and role of myths in modern and postmodern societies? Against this background, National Myths: Constructed Pasts, Contested Presents relies on a sample of nations from around the world and seeks to highlight the functioning of national myths, both as representations that make sense of a collectivity, and as socially grounded tools used in a web of power relations. The collection draws together contributions from international experts to examine the present state of national myths, and their fate in today's rapidly-changing society. Can - or must - nations do without the sort of overarching symbolic configurations that national myths provide? If so, how to rethink the fabrics and the future of our societies? This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in sociology, national, identity and memory studies, myths, shared beliefs, or collective imaginaries.

This book reassesses Hardy's fiction in the light of his prolonged engagement with the folklore and traditions of rural England. Drawing on wide research, it demonstrates the pivotal role played in the novels by such customs and beliefs as 'overlooking', hag-riding, skimmington-riding, sympathetic magic, mumming, bonfire nights, May Day celebrations, Midsummer divination, and the 'Portland Custom'. This study shows how such traditions were lived out in practice in village life, and how they were represented in written texts - in literature, newspapers, county histories, folklore books, the work of the Folklore Society, archival documents, and letters. It explores tensions between Hardy's repeated insistence on the authenticity of his accounts and his engagement with contemporary anthropologists and folklorists, and reveals how his efforts to resist their 'excellently neat' categories of culture open up wider questions about the nature of belief, progress, and social change.

Cemetery Plots from Victoria to Verdun considers the rhetoric of burial reform, cemeterial customs, and epitaphic writing in Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century through the Great War. The first half of the book studies mid- and late-Victorian responses to death and burial, including epitaph collections, burial reform documents, and fictional representations of burial and epitaph writing, especially in the novels of Charles Dickens. The second half studies the same discourse of burial, mourning, and epitaphs in select fiction, memoirs, diaries, correspondence, and poems produced in response to World War I in order to understand how writing about individual memorialization changed in post-war British literature and culture.

Glastonbury, a small town in Somerset, England, stands at the epicenter of a longstanding tradition placing the Holy Grail in Britain. Legend holds that Joseph of Arimathea traveled to Britain, bringing with him both a gathering of followers and the cup that Jesus used at the last supper. He is said to have buried the Grail at Glastonbury, where some claim he founded the first church in England. This volume chronicles one man's personal quest to find historical evidence supporting the traditional beliefs surrounding Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail in southern England. Bolstered by an abundance of evidence supporting the presence of Joseph in 1st Century Britain, he separates his findings from the fantasy of the Grail Romances, answering questions about the Grail and the origins and progressions of its legend.

"I have run the gauntlet of many borders in my time, but the border I grew up with at home was far and away the most trying," writes Seamas OCathain, Professor Emeritus at University College Dublin and former Director of the National Folklore Collection. Born in Drumquin, County Tyrone, to a family of Catholic business people and farmers, he grew up "a stone's throw" from the border that separates Donegal in the Republic from the six counties of Northern Ireland - "a border policed by little corporals that was the bane of our lives." JUMPING THE BORDER is an engaging account of his experience - as a child and as a young man - in three distinctive cultures, now radically changed. He describes the Tyrone of the 1940s and 1950s where Protestant and Catholic neighbours shared their lives at a personal level, but where institutions were divisive. His father's prosperous business was ruined because of a political event he supported. The schools and the curriculum were dividers of the two communities. The border was a nuisance to everyone. As a post-graduate student in the 1960s, he took up residence in the Donegal Gaeltacht of "Na Cruacha", where "real old Irish" was still spoken. He did a study of the area's place names, and recorded the distinctive music and speech of "Na Cruacha". Shortly afterwards his research took him to the far north of Europe, to Sapmi (known as Lapland), a cultural rather than a political territory which spreads over four countries, and where he immersed himself in the culture and language of the Sami people at a time when their native language and customs were under threat and belittled. Seamas's many international distinctions and awards include: Knight (First Class) of the Order of the Lion of Finland; the Dag Stromback Prize of the Gustavus Adolphus Academy, Uppsala, Sweden; and the Ruth Michaela-Jena Ratcliff Prize, Edinburgh. He is an honorary member of the Finnish Kalevala Society; a member of the Folklore Fellows of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, Helsinki; and a sometime member of the Advisory Board of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

This book takes an engaging look at the significance of traditional proverbs and their variation in the modern world. From sales pitch to propagandistic tool, Wolfgang Mieder looks at how we adapt proverbs to rapidly changing social attitudes - the original wording of proverbs changes to fit modern advertising slogans or political rhetoric, misogynist sayings become feminist slogans, and late medieval woodcuts illustrating proverbs find their modern equivalents in political cartoons and comic strips. The book is richly illustrated and contains name, subject, and proverb indexes.