Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard, two sister-writers born and raised in Jamaica, re-create imagined and lived homelands in their literature by commemorating the history, culture, and religion of the Caribbean. Velma Pollard was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica. By the time she was three, her parents had moved to Woodside, St. Mary, in northeast Jamaica, where her sister, Erna, was born. Even though they both travel widely and often, the sisters both still live in Jamaica. The sisters write about their homeland as a series of memories and stories in their many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They center on their home village of Woodside in St. Mary Parish, Jamaica, occasionally moving the settings of their fiction and poetry to other regions of Jamaica and various Caribbean islands, as well as other parts of the diaspora in the United States, Canada, and England. The role of women in the patriarchal society of Jamaica and much of the Caribbean is also a subject of the sisters' writing. Growing up in what Brodber calls the kumbla, the protective but restrictive environment of many women in the Anglo-Caribbean, is an important theme in their fiction. In her fiction, Pollard discusses the gender gaps in employment and the demands of marriage and the special contributions of women to family and community. Many scholars have also explored the significance of spirit in Brodber's work, including the topics of "spirit theft," "spirit possession," and spirits existing through time, from Africa to the present. Brodber's narratives also show communication between the living and the dead, from Jane and Louisa (1980) to Nothing's Mat (2014). Yet, few scholars have examined Brodber's work on par with her sister's writing. Drawing upon interviews with the authors, this is the first book to give Brodber and Pollard their due and study the sisters' important contributions.

Now back in print for the first time in many years is one of the most comprehensive studies of Celtic mythology, legend, and poetry ever written, presenting the entire enthralling panorama of the mythical and legendary traditions of the ancient Gaelic and British Celts. Here, in clear, compact, readable form are stories of all the chief characters of Celtic myth: the Gaelic gods and the giants they battled; the "Champions of the Red Branchy" of Ulster, heroes of the great "Irish Iliad;" Finn and the Fenians; and the gods and heroes of the ancient Britons, down through the great deeds of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. You will find the original adventures of such great heroes and heroines as Cuchulainn, Diarmait, Conan, Ossian, Emer, Dierdre, Rhiannon, and Bran. These legendary figures and their epics of magic and might greatly influenced the writings of such authors as Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kenneth Morris, and Robert E. Howard.

Baring-Gould's eye-opening history of lycanthropy - the werewolf curse - delves deep into the lore, unearthing various historical cases, several of which date back to Ancient or Medieval times. The concept of a human transforming into a wolf has ancient origins, with several Greek and Roman authors such as Virgil, Ovid, Herodotus and Pliny raising the concept in their poetry and other writings. Rumors of sorcery that could induce a human to change was attributed to magicians in far off places such as Scythia, and such beliefs were widely held. Later, the Norse civilization's mythology introduced lycanthropy and other kinds of transformation. Humans as wolves, bears, birds and other beasts were said to appear in the northern wilds; the Norse God Odin took the form of a bird on regular occasions. Berserker warriors would clad themselves in wolf skins; Bj rn, son of Ulfheoin, was famed for his ability to shift between human and wolf forms.

This is a study of the manner in which certain mythical notions of the world become accepted as fact. Dathorne shows how particular European concepts such as El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, a race of Amazons, and monster (including cannibal) images were first associated with the Orient. After the New World encounter they were repositioned to North and South America. The book examines the way in which Arabs and Africans are conscripted into the view of the world and takes an unusual, non-Eurocentric viewpoint of how Africans journeyed to the New World and Europe, participating in, what may be considered, an early stage of world exploration and discovery. The study concludes by looking at European travel literature from the early journeys of St. Brendan, through the Viking voyages and up to Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville. In all these instances, the encounters seem to justify mythical belief. Dathorne's interest in the subject is both intellectual and passionate since, coming from Guyana, he was very much part of this malformed Weltschmerz.

People have been attracted to the lure of distant, exotic places throughout the ages, and over the centuries a vast store of legends and lore relating to travel have grown up. This encyclopedia represents a complilation of travel legends and lore of civilizations throughout the world.

This book entitled, Garden of Eden Found, is divided into three almost equal parts. Part I of the book is exactly what the title says. It reveals and explains the exact geographical location of the ancient site of the Garden of Eden. This is an absolutely new and a previously undiscovered site. People suppose that we must yet wait on a prophet of God to reveal its location, but this book explains that God through the prophet Moses said everything he could to explain the location of the Garden of Eden in the second chapter of Genesis. It is just that the names of the lands and rivers have changed. Garden of Eden was located upon the North American continent. Note that according to Genesis 1:10 each land was called earth. Thus, it could have been on any continent. There has never been one fact of evidence to show that the Garden of Eden was located in the Middle East anyway. This has only been a supposition of the so-called learned; even those who write the text books; and most of whom do not believe in God or in revelation. The author has simply put together the Genesis account of Eden with the latter-day revelations concerning Adam-ondi-Ahman in America. nights and Sabbath of the creation account in Genesis chapter one. No one has ever discovered nor understood their ultimate meaning before this work. The author submits that this concept is the greatest concept that can be conceived by the mind of man concerning ultimate reality. This concept ties together the law of eternal progression, the order of the universes of the cosmos, and the days and nights of creation as one and the same thing. So the author begins Part II of his book with the following paragraph. would name my address, The Number and Order of the Universes of the Cosmos. If I was a philosopher and was presenting this topic before my fellow philosophers, I would entitle my presentation, The Law of Eternal Progression to Ultimate Continuum. But if I happened to be a theologian, and was preaching a sermon to my parishioners, I would call my message, The Meaning of the Six Days and Six Nights and a Sabbath of Creation. This is because these three subjects concern the same ultimate reality. The first is scientific, the second is philosophical, and the third is religious. Actually, this is the concept of mankind at the present time. Most people, including scientists, the philosophers, and the theologians, consider that the universe is the cosmos and that the cosmos is the universe. However, this is simply not the true case of the matter, for the cosmos is the sum total of the series of the twelve universes of the cosmos. found in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Bible? Who would have thought that God had hidden it in the simple account of the six days and the six nights and Sabbath of creation? I will attempt to show, in plainness and simplicity, that this is the true interpretation. Book of Revelation. The new truth to understand is that they represent only natural things and historical events of the past two-thousand years of Christian history. There are three general principles that we must accept in order to understand the symbolism of the Book of Revelation. Let me now list the general principles in this order. The first thing to understand is that the prophecy of the Book of Revelation covers the past two-thousand years of western history. The second thing to understand is that the prophecy is only about Christianity.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Orature and Yoruba Riddles takes readers into the hitherto unexplored undercurrents of riddles in Africa. Because of its oral and all too often ephemeral nature, riddles have escaped close scrutiny from scholars. The strength of the Yoruba as the focus of this study is impressive indeed: a major ethnic group in Africa, with established connections with the black diaspora in North America and the Caribean; a rich oral and written culture; a large and diverse population; and an integrated rural-urban society. The book is divided into six chapters for readers' convenience. When read in sequence, the book provides a comprehensive, holistic sense of Yoruba creativity where riddles are concerned. At the same time, the book is conceived in a way that each chapter could be read individually. Therefore, those readers seeking understanding of a specific type of riddle may target a single chapter appearing most relevant to her/his curiosity.

The ten chapters of "Proverbs Speak Louder Than Words" present a composite picture of the richness of proverbs as significant expressions of folk wisdom as is manifest from their appearance in art, culture, folklore, history, literature, and the mass media. The first chapter surveys the multifaceted aspects of paremiology (the study of proverbs), with the second chapter illustrating the paremiological work by the American folklorist Alan Dundes. The next two chapters look at the effective role that proverbs play in the mass media, where they are cited in their traditional wording or as innovative anti-proverbs. The fifth chapter discusses proverbs as expressions of the worldview of New England. This is followed by two chapters on the proverbial prowess of American presidents, to wit the proverbial style in the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams and a discussion of Abraham Lincoln's apocryphal proverb "Don't swap horses in the middle of the stream." The eighth chapter traces the tradition of proverb iconography from medieval woodcuts to Pieter Bruegel the Elder and on to modern caricatures, cartoons, and comic strips. The last two chapters deal with the origin and history of the proverbial expression "to tilt at windmills" as an allusion to Cervantes' Don Quixote and the many proverbial utterances in Mozart's letters. The book draws attention to the fact that proverbs as metaphorical signs continue to play an important role in oral and written communication. Proverbs as socalled monumenta humana are omnipresent in all facets of life, and while they are neither sacrosanct nor saccharine, they usually offer much common sense or wisdom based on recurrent experiences and observations.