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.

Elizabeth Stewart is a highly acclaimed singer, pianist and accordionist whose reputation has spread widely not only as an outstanding musician but as the principal inheritor and advocate of her family and their music. First discovered by folklorists in the 1950s, the Stewarts of Fetterangus, including Elizabeth's mother Jean, her uncle Ned, and her aunt Lucy, have had immense musical influence. Lucy in particular became a celebrated ballad singer and in 1961 Smithsonian Folkways released a collection of her classic ballad recordings that brought the family's music and name to an international audience."Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen" is a significant memoir of Scottish Traveller life, containing stories, music, and songs from this prominent Traveller family. The book is the result of a close partnership between Elizabeth Stewart and Scottish folk singer and writer Alison McMorland. It details the ancestral history of Elizabeth Stewart's family, the story of her mother, the story of her aunt, and her own life story, framing and contextualizing the music and song examples and showing how totally integrated these art forms are with daily life. It is a remarkable portrait of a Traveller family from the perspective of its matrilineal line. The narrative, spanning five generations and written in Scots, captures the rhythms and idioms of Elizabeth Stewart's speaking voice and is extraordinary from a musical, cultural, sociological, and historical point of view. The book features 145 songs, eight original piano compositions, folk-tale versions, rhymes and riddles, and eighty fascinating illustrations, from the family of Elizabeth, her mother Jean (1912-1962) and her aunt Lucy (1901-1982). In addition, there are notes on the songs and a series of appendices. "Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen" will appeal to those interested in traditional music, folklore, and folk song--and in particular, Scottish tradition.

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").

Formulaic phraseology presents the epitome of words worn and weathered by trial and the tests of time. Scholarship on weathered words is exceptionally diverse and interdisciplinary. This volume focuses on verbal art, which makes Oral-Formulaic Theory (OFT) a major point of reference. Yet weathered words are but a part of OFT, and OFT is only a part of scholarship on weathered words. Each of the eighteen essays gathered here brings particular aspects of formulaic language into focus. No volume on such a diverse topic can be all-encompassing, but the essays highlight aspects of the phenomenon that may be eclipsed elsewhere: they diverge not only in style, but sometimes even in how they choose to define "formula." As such, they offer overlapping frames that complement one another both in their convergences and their contrasts. While they view formulaicity from multifarious angles, they unite in a Picasso of perspectives on which the reader can reflect and draw insight.

Jokes and Targets takes up an appealing and entertaining topic the social and historical origins of jokes about familiar targets such as rustics, Jewish spouses, used car salesmen, and dumb blondes. Christie Davies explains why political jokes flourished in the Soviet Union, why Europeans tell jokes about American lawyers but not about their own lawyers, and why sex jokes often refer to France rather than to other countries. One of the world s leading experts on the study of humor, Davies provides a wide-ranging and detailed study of the jokes that make up an important part of everyday conversation."

Animals played a crucial role in many aspects of Celtic life: in the economy, hunting, warfare, art, literature and religion. Such was their importance to this society, that an intimate relationship between humans and animals developed, in which the Celts believed many animals to have divine powers. In Animals in Celtic Life and Myth, Miranda Green draws on evidence from early Celtic documents, archaeology and iconography to consider the manner in which animals formed the basis of elaborate rituals and beliefs. She reveals that animals were endowed with an extremely high status, considered by the Celts as worthy of respect and admiration.

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.

Profiles of artists and performers from around the world form the basis of this innovative volume that explores the many ways individuals engage with, carry on, revive, and create tradition. Leading scholars in folklore studies consider how the field has addressed the connections between performer and tradition and examine theoretical issues involved in fieldwork and the analysis and dissemination of scholarship in the context of relationships with the performers. Honoring Henry Glassie and his remarkable contributions to the field of folklore, these vivid case studies exemplify the best of performer-centered ethnography.

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.

First published in 1969, An Orkney Tapestry, George Mackay Brown's seminal work, is a unique look at Orkney through the eye of a poet. Originally commissioned by his publisher as an introduction to the Orkney Islands, Brown approached the writing from a unique perspective and went on to produce a rich fusion of ballad, folk tale, short story, drama and environmental writing. The book, written at an early stage in the author's career, explores themes that appear in his later work and was a landmark in Brown's development as a writer. Above all, it is a celebration of Orkney's people, language and history. This edition reproduces Sylvia Wishart's beautiful illustrations, commissioned for the original hardback. Made available again for the first time in over 40 years, this new edition sits alongside Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain as an important precursor of environmental writing by the likes of Kathleen Jamie, Robert Macfarlane, Malachy Tallack and, most recently, Amy Liptrot.

A Companion to Folklore presents an original and comprehensive collection of essays from international experts in the field of folklore studies. Unprecedented in depth and scope, this state-of-the-art collection uniquely displays the vitality of folklore research across the globe. * An unprecedented collection of original, state of the art essays on folklore authored by international experts * Examines the practices and theoretical approaches developed to understand the phenomena of folklore * Considers folklore in the context of multi-disciplinary topics that include poetics, performance, religious practice, myth, ritual and symbol, oral textuality, history, law, politics and power as well as the social base of folklore * Selected by Choice as a 2013 Outstanding Academic Title

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.

Spring and summer are my mother's time, autumn and winter are my husband's. What is left for me? Persephone spends six months of the year under the ground with her husband, king of the dead, and six months on earth with her mother, goddess of the harvest. It has been this way for nine thousand years, since the deal was struck. But when she resurfaces this spring, something is different. Rains lash the land, crops grow out of season or not at all, there are people trying to build a road through the woods, and her mother does not seem able to stop them. The natural world is changing rapidly and even the gods have lost control. While Demeter tries to regain her powers and fend off her daughter's husband, who wants to drag his queen back underground for good, Persephone finally gets a taste of freedom, joining a group of protestors. Used to blinking up at the world from below, as she looks down on the earth for the very first time from the treetops with activist Snow, Persephone realises that there are choices she can make for herself. But what will these choices mean for her mother, her husband, and for the new shoots of life inside her? No Season but the Summer takes a classic myth and turns it on its head, asking what will happen when our oldest stories fail us, when all the rules have changed. It is, above all, a book about choice.

Proverbs offer a concise record of folk wisdom and have appeared in oral tradition, literature, art, and popular culture for centuries. Written by the foremost authority on proverbs, this reference gives high school students, undergraduates, and general readers a concise yet comprehensive overview of proverbs in world culture. The volume begins with definitions and classifications of proverbs, followed by discussions of several notable examples. The book then examines approaches to the study of proverbs and the place of proverbs in literature, politics, popular songs, and everyday life. It closes with a bibliography of print and electronic resources and a glossary. Included are numerous illustrations.

Just about everyone has heard at least one proverb, and most people have heard more. Proverbs offer a concise record of folk wisdom and have appeared in oral tradition, literature, art, and popular culture for centuries. One of the most varied and fascinating types of folklore, proverbs are studied at all levels and are of interest to a wide range of audiences. Written by the foremost authority on proverbs, this reference gives high school students, undergraduates, and general readers a concise yet comprehensive overview of proverbs in world culture.

The volume begins with definitions and classifications of proverbs and a discussion of their origin and dissemination. It then discusses several representative proverbs from around the world. This is followed by a review of scholarship on proverbs. The book next looks at how several proverbs have appeared in political speeches, literature, popular culture, and everyday life. The handbook closes with a bibliography of print and electronic resources and a glossary. Included are numerous photos illustrating the role of proverbs around the world.

The stories presented in Peninnah Schram's highly anticipated Stories within Stories: From the Jewish Oral Tradition are drawn primarily from talmudic and midrashic sources, medieval texts, and the Israel Folktale Archives. Each enchanting story-within-a-story is part of the Jewish oral tradition and continues to enlighten, educate, and entertain audiences as have all of the author's previous works. The types of stories found in this wonderful collection (described by Peninnah Schram as "frame and chain stories") have been widely popular in both Jewish and non-Jewish literary traditions. Since Jews have lived in so many places, they have been influenced by the stories told by their surrounding neighbors. For example, this genre of tales has been especially popular in the Jewish stories of the Middle East, having been influenced by the structure and contents of Arabic literature. Stories within Stories contains fifty stories, mostly made up of folktales. Various types of stories are interspersed so that a humorous story is followed by a romantic tale, which is followed by a religious tale, which is followed by a tall tale, and so on. The stories come from various ethnic communities represented in the Israel Folktale Archives including Morocco, Iraq, Kurdistan, Persia, Yemen, and Eastern Europe. Gifted and highly acclaimed storyteller Peninnah Schram contributes to the ever-growing library of Jewish folklore collections, thus actively helping to restore the rich treasures of Jewish oral tradition in our contemporary world.

This book contains 175 tales drawn equally from the ancient and modern periods of Korea, plus 16 further tales provided for comparative purposes. Nothing else on this scale or depth is available in any western language. Three broad classes of material are included: foundation myths of ancient states and clans, ancient folktales and legends, modern folktales. Each narrative contains information on its source and provenance, and on its folklore type, similarities to folklore types from China, Japan and elsewhere.

What historical tragedy could possibly make a young Wallingford girl daub a wall with her own tears? What really happened to the family who encountered a UFO in Stanford-in-the-Vale?What made a Highworth Squire's ghost choose to be banished to a barrel of cider?And what does the Uffington White Horse get up to once every hundred years?The Vale of the White Horse and the beautiful countryside of South Oxfordshire is a landscape steeped in thousands of years of legends, history and mystery. Here are witches, monsters and ghosts; old legends and modern-day tales of strange encounters with the unknown. From the mildly curious to the frighteningly inexplicable, The Veiled Vale is a treasure trove of fabulous folklore and modern mysteries.