Building a Better Folklore Library

I am always on the lookout for more folklore books.   I want them all!    Here are the new releases for July of this year.

• Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century - Timothy Baycroft, ed.  National Cultivation of Culture, Brill Academic Pub.
• Legends of the Caucasus - David Hunt.  Saqi Books.
• Saints of Sage and Saddle: Folklore Among the Mormons - Austin E. Fife and Alta Stephens Fife.  Literary Licensing, LLC.
• Pop Mythology: Collected Essays - Laura A. Shamas.   Telemachus Press.
• Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues and National Identities - Jill Terry and Neil A. Wynn, eds.  American Made Music Series, University Press of Mississippi.  
• Kachina Tales from the Indian Pueblas - Gene Meany Hodge.  Sunstone Press.
• Gawain and the Grail Quest: Healing the Waste Land in Our Time - Jeffrey John Dixon.  Floris Books.
• Spirit Memory: An Ancestral Journey through Aboriginal and European Transformation - Mary Tasi.  Influence Publishing.
• Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen: Travellers' Songs, Stories and Tunes of the Fetterangus Stewarts - Elizabeth Stewart.  Compiled by Alison McMorland.  University Press of Mississippi/Elphinstone Institute.

Hot Folklore Fun in the Summertime: Folklore Reads on the Beach

Summertime.    And the fish are jumping.   Summertime.

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime.   Summertime.

Hot fun in the summertime.

Here are some folklore books to bring to the beach.  

• Post-Revolutionary Chicana Literature: Memoir, Folklore and Fiction of the Border, 1900-1950 - Sam Lopez.   Latino Communities: Emerging Voices - Political, Social, Cultural and Legal Issues, Routledge.
• Folklore in Action: Essays for Discussion in Honor of MacEdward Leach - Horace Palmer Beck and MacEdward Leach, eds.  Literary Licensing, LLC.
• The Art of Mythical Composition and Narration: Dagara White Bagr - Alexis B. Tengan.   European Interuniversity Press.   
• American Proverbs About Women - Lois Kerchen.  Booklocker.
• Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome - E. M. Berens.   Indoeuropean Publishing.
• What Happens Next?  Contemporary Urban Legends and Popular Culture - Gail Arlene de Vos.  Libraries Unlimited.
• Tales from 1,001 Nights: Aladdin, Ali Baba and Other Favorites - Anonymous.  Translated by Malcolm C. and Ursula Lyons.   Penguin Classics.
• Yes and No: The Intimate Folklore of Africa - Alta Jablow.  Literary Licensing, LLC.
• Norse Romance I: The Tristan Legend; Norse Romance II: The Knights of the Round Table; Norse Romance III: Haerra Ivan - Marianne E. Kalinke, ed.  Arthurian Archives, D. S. Brewer.   
• Archaeology and Folklore - Amy Gazin-Schwartz and Cornelius J. Holtorf, eds.   Theoretical Archaeology Group, Routledge.

Folklore Dump

Here are some links that are of interest to me:

• Bad Archaeology - A Snopes for the people who try to tell you the world will end in 2012 or that the pyramids were built by space aliens.
• Know Your Meme - This is how the youths communicate with one another.   
• John Miles Foley, RIP - founder of one of my favorite journals and author of a number of influential books on oral literature has passed.
• 100 Years of Titanic Songs - not counting Celine Dion.
• Paganfest - who are more ridiculous: pagans or juggalos? Discuss.
• Iran's Epic - new book out about the Shahnameh.   There can't be enough books about the Shahnameh, IMHO.  
• Eefing - American folk tradition.   If you don't know it yet, then start clicking!
• More Titanic Music (NO CELINE DION!)
• Блатная Песня - who doesn't love Russian prison songs?   
• Peasant Culture in Russian Cartoons - look, there's a metafilter about this.

Spring Reading List

I have just recently discovered that because I possess a coveted Boston Public Library card I am able to access on-line thousands of articles in "The Journal of American Folklore," "Western Folklore," etc.   Loading up my Kindle!   It's almost like I am back in academia without all the backbiting and politicking!

Here are the spring folklore books I want you to buy for me:

• The Seven Tengu Scrolls: Evil and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy in Medieval Japanese Buddhism - Haruko Wakabayashi.   University of Hawaii Press.   
• Miraculous Plenty: Irish Religious Folktales and Legends - Sean O Suilleabhain, ed.   Trans. by William Caulfield.   Scribhinni Bealodis/Folklore Studies Series, Folklore of Ireland Council.  
• Folk Tales of the Maldives - Xavier Romero-frias.   Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.
• Enchanted Legends and Lore of New Mexico: Witches, Ghosts & Spirits - Ray John de Aragon.  The History Press.
• The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780-1914 - Karl Bell.   Cambridge University Press.
• The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn - ed. by Lenn E. Goodman and Richard MacGregor.   Oxford University Press.
• The Irish Fairy Tales: A Narrative Tradition from the Middle Ages to Yeats and Stephens - Vito Carrassi.   Trans. by Kevin Wren.   University of Delaware Press.
• Don't Shoot the Albatross!: Nautical Myths and Superstitions - Jonathan Eyers.  Adlard Coles.
• The Voice of the People: Writing the European Folk Revival, 1760-1914 - ed. by Matthew Campbell and Michael Perraudin.   Anthem World History, Anthem Press.
• The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale - Caroline Sumpter.   Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, Palgrave MacMillan.
• A Lark for the Sake of Their Country: The 1926 General Strike Volunteers in Folklore and Memory - Rachelle H. Saltzman.  Manchester University Press.
• The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science: A Mythologist Looks (Seriously) at Popular Science Writing - Gregory Schrempp.   McGill-Queen's University Press.
• The Denver Folk Music Tradition: An Unplugged History, from Harry Tuft to Swallow Hill and Beyond - Paul A. Malkoski.   The History Press.
• Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States - Kip Lornell.   American Made Music Series, University Press of Mississippi.
• The Irresistable Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre - Jack Zipes.   Princeton University Press.
• Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan - Michelle Bigenho.   Duke University Press Books.
• Villages on Stage: Folklore and Nationalism in the Republic of Moldova - Jennifer R. Cash.   Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia, LIT Verlag.
• A Companion to Folklore - Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem, eds.   Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Anthropology, Wiley-Blackwell.
• Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords and Critical Words - Ruth B. Bottigheimer.   State University of New York Press.

Happy readings!

Folklore TV on the Interwebs

Sometimes I don't know how things like this can go under my radar for so long, but there was a charming television show produced by North Carolina Public Television called "Folkways" hosted by musician David Holt.

I came across this by reading the latest Foxfire collection, which I recommend picking up.

You can find the show here at UNC-TV online. Viewing these episodes requires Realplayer, and I don't like Realplayer. But, happily, they are also available -FOR FREE! - on iTunes. I already have a few episodes loaded on my iPod for my next trip to the gym.

Add These to Your Bookshelf

It's the beginning of the month, and that means one thing at The New Vernacular Culture - that it's time to check out the new titles of interest to folklorists of all stripes. Here are some of the books I would like to add to my bookshelf soon:

• The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore: A Study in Comparative Archaeology - Christian Blinkenberg. Cambridge University Press. This book was originally published in 1911. It's in the Public Domain and can also be found here. And here. If you want a hard copy - for cheaper - try out the Harvard Bookstore; their machine Gutenberg will print out any pdf in minutes flat.
• Demonology and Devil-lore - Moncure Daniel Conway. Cambridge Library Collection - Spiritualism and Esoteric Knowledge, Cambridge University Press. Reprint of 19th century work, in two volumes. Volume two here. Also free in many formats at Archive.org.
• Religion and the Decline in Magic - Keith Thomas. Penguin History, Penguin Global.
• Lord of the Dead: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl - Rudolfo Anaya. University of New Mexico Press.
• Ragnarok: The End of the Gods - A. S. Byatt. Myths Series, Grove Press. I don't know, I kind of like John Hodgman's version.
• The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale - Caroline Sumpter. Palgrave Studies in 19th Century, Palgrave Macmillan.

This month more than others, it appears that there is a surfeit of re-published folklore books and print-on-demand titles. Most of these titles are available for free many places - for the Kindle, on Archive.org and over at Google Books.

Shamanism and Folklore

The local alt-weekly recently published an article about contemporary uses of shamanism around Charlottesville in which they portrayed three local practitioners - one of whom is my friend, former boss and fellow Slavic folklorist Rachel Mann. I had the privilege of being Rachel's teaching assistant for a class on Story and Healing, which included a substantial segment on shamanism. This class was also ground-breaking in it's use of online collaborative writing tools, which is what propelled me into my sub-specialty of technology in folklore studies. It can be said that this class set both Rachel and I on paths that would shape the rest of our lives.

It was nice to read about how Dr. Mann is combining her academic background with her spiritual beliefs to create a local community of healing, you can check out the CVille weekly article here.

Here's some more resources on shamanism and folklore:

• "A World of Healing: The Mesa in Peruvian Shamanism" - Rachel Mann's article on Shaman's Portal.
• "Tuvan Shamanic Folklore" - Mongush B. Kenin-Lopsan. Excerpt from the book "Shamanic Worlds."
• "China's Dagur Minority: Society, Shamanism and Folklore" - Kevin Stuart, LI Wuewei and Shelear.
• "Shamanic Remnants in Hungarian Folklore" - I know it's a Wikipedia article, use your judgement.