Mythology, folklore and supersition

Рассматриваются имена, которыми в календарном обрядовом фольклоре обозначается Масленица, воспринимаемая антропоморфно. Оба основных имени – Авдотья (Дуня) и Прасковея – восходят к календарным олицетворениям христианских святых: св. Евдокии и св. Параскевы-Пятницы. В простонародном восприятии Евдокия, Параскева-Пятница, Масленица имеют много общего.

A close examination of Russian bodily omens reveals, despite the unscientific character of the associations underlying them, a scientific mind at work in a pre-scientific environment.  Their focus on the anomaly is the first parallel that unites them with science.  Kuhn (1970:52) says that "[d]iscovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, i.e. with the recognition that nature somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science".  Omens, too, take anomaly as their starting point.  Once a violation of the expected axiological norm is established, the second part of the equation suggests an etiology, constructing a new pattern of regularity which enables one to know what to expect.  This, too, is essentially a scientific move; cf.  Russell's claim that "[t]he desire to know what to expect is a large part of [...] the impulse to scientific investigation” (1948:426).  In a world without science as we know it, this impulse inevitably has no opportunity to develop beyond the establishment of a relationship between the observed anomaly and its interpretation on the basis of similarity, homeopathic associations, and culturally constructed analogy.  As Jahoda points out (1969:143), magic and science share common elements, and the structure of the omens examined above indicates that Russian bodily the death of omens, too, can be seen as a reflection of nascent scientific thinking.

Интересная особенность традиционной свадьбы у русских и у некоторых других народов России – очень быстрое движение свадебного поезда. А из мифологических персонажей именно леший был связан с передвижением, с лесными тропами, с путями-дорогами. Так что быстрое, небезопасное для иных проезжавших по дорогам людей движение свадебных процессий отразилось в мифологических поверьях о проносящихся по тропам и дорогам свадьбах леших.

The Immaterial Book of St. Cyprian is a cartography of Iberian stories, myths, and “rural legends” about the infamous spellbook of the saint of occultists. It charts the purported powers of this grimoire, and the powers such a tome confers upon the bearer.
Newly translated from the Portuguese by José Leitão, these collected legends of Cyprian’s Book illuminate Iberian conceptions of local witchcraft and countermagic, enchanted treasures, the Devil and the mysterious mouros and mouras – faerie-like denizens that manifest to tempt and terrify the unwary and the foolhardy. Leitão provides a rich introduction contextualizing the legends and discussing the various themes arising in them.

ABSTRACT
The Jacobean era's infamous witchcraft trials are recalled after reservoir repairs close to Pendle Hill reveal a buried cottage with bricked‐up cat. Interpretations of the building as the site of Malkin Tower, recorded in court records as the venue of a witches coven are critically evaluated in the light of archaeological and historical evidence.

KEYWORDS
WITCH, PENDLE WITCH TRIALS, PENDLE HILL, MALKIN TOWER, FOLK BELIEF, MAGIC, LANCASTER ASSIZES, WISE WOMEN, CUNNING FOLK, ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SEVENTEENTHCENTURY, ALIZON DEVICE, SALEM WITCHES, THOMAS POTTS, LOWER BLACK MOSS, ELIZABETH SOUTHERNS, DEMDIKE, ELIZABETH DEVICE, JAMES DEVICE, ANNE WHITTLE, CHATTOX, ANNE REDFERNE, JANE BULCOCK, JOHN BULCOCK, ALICE NUTTER, KATHERINE HEWITT, ALICE GRAY, JENNET PRESTON, GUNPOWDER PLOT, CAT

The topic of this paper is a whole complex of intertwined notions of soul, spirits, forerunners / premonitions and other types of long-distance influence from a person’s mind. I will try to lead you into this ‘jungle’ by looking at some terms from the Shetlandic dialect of English. The noun gander, inherited from Old Norse gandr, has some interesting meanings that have never before been discussed by scholars:
- ‘a high, roaring wind; strong gust of wind.’
- ‘a sudden feeling of powerlessness, nausea, sickness at heart’

An addendum to Kamil Stachowski and Olaf Stachowski’s “Possibly Oriental Elements in Slavonic Folklore. Upiór ~ wampir” (2017). Etymological propositions involving Old Slavonic pirъ “a feast” are discussed: one by Jan L. Perkowski from The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism (1989); three by Bruce A. McClelland from Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead (2006); and one by Michael Dilts, from the remarks in his peer review of this paper.

The myth or tale of the theft of the thunder-instrument from the thunder-god by his adversary (ATU 1148b) is encountered almost exclusively in the Circum-Baltic.  It is found in Germanic, Sámic, Finnic and Baltic cultures.  It is otherwise only encountered in one early Greek source of questionable cultural provenance.  This paper reviews the evidence of the tradition in different cultures, with a critical reassessment of the Germanic traditions, which have often been given priority.  ATU 1148b will be addressed as a Circum-Baltic phenomenon.  The paper approaches the distinct forms of ATU 1148b in each culture’s traditions in relation as reflecting socio-historical processes.  Emphasis is given to patterns of social use and how these are conditioned by relationships to other traditions and conceptions in each cultural milieu.  The evolution of the tradition into its various forms is considered the result of a long and dynamic process of interaction between cultures.  This development makes it unreasonable to attribute the Circum-Baltic traditions and forms exclusively to either Finno-Ugric or Indo-European traditions.  It is proposed that ATU 1148b is best approached as a Circum-Baltic phenomenon and representative of a Circum-Baltic mythology which is dependent on historical processes of linguistic-cultural interaction and exchange.  It is proposed that the concentration of ATU 1148b across diverse cultures in the Circum-Baltic is at least partially attributable to the maintenance of corresponding mythic narratives in adjacent cultures.  This explanation would find parallels in the persistence and form of genres (e.g. oral epic in Northern Europe) and stylistic priorities (e.g. alliteration in Northern Europe), which also appear to exhibit isoglosses related to cultural contact.

Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

This article is the second part in a series. It shows that the Old Norse term hrímþurs, often translated 'frost-ogre' or 'frost-giant' in English, was a poetic term as a variation on the archaic and obscure poetic term þurs (addressed in part I) that was employed for h-alliteration. After reviewing the limited poetic examples, the article shows that this term was strategically correlated with hrím ['rime, frost'] as a prime element of the world-creation in Snorri Sturluson's 13th century mythography, where hrímþurs is otherwise uniquely elevated to a distinct ethnonym. This construction of a mythic ethnic category is placed in
dialogue with other places where Snorri seems to have elevated or created a term and constructed a mythic ethnos in Edda. This discussion is put forward as a frame for considering whether Snorri also constructed the category of gods called ‘Vanir’, the controversial topic of the so-called Vanir Debate.

The origins of the Germanic “Straw-bears” have been subject to speculation for years. In this study the Straw-bears will be contextualized along with their European relatives so that their meaning can be better appreciated within a larger framework of European ritual belief and social practice. The cosmogony in question is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears, a belief that continued into the 20th century among Basque-speakers. The transformative aspects of the Straw-bear performances will be examined in relation to “Good-Luck Visits”, a type of performance aimed at bringing good health and prosperity to the houses visited and in which Straw-bears and their relatives have played a major role.

This paper constructs an overview of Snorri Sturluson’s impact, through Edda, on the cultural activity of mythology in vernacular poetries and narration. General evidence of impacts on eddic and skaldic poetries (§1) provides a frame for a series of illustrative examples, beginning with the relatively unequivocal cases of the rímur Lokrur (§2) and the late stanzas added to the eddic poem Baldrs draumar (§3). The kenning ‘mud of the eagle’ is examined in skaldic verse as an indication of Snorri’s reception in a contemporary context (§4), opening a three-part survey of cumulative evidence of influence on the eddic poem Lokasenna (§5–7). The possibility of influence as a model for the eddic poem Þrymskviða’s composition is suggested (§8), which would have analogues in saga prose (§9). Although details may be equivocated, Edda nevertheless emerges as a (sometimes contested) voice of authority in medieval Icelandic mythological discourses.

This study proposes that archaeology should adopt an integrated approach combining archaeology and folklore. As a case study, the legend of “The Devil‘s Footprints on pendle and the stones dropped by him on Apronful Hill” is considered in the context of both the folklore of Lancashire and also the archaeological evidence for rock cut footprints from calderstones and elsewhere in Northern Europe. A possible ancient connection between the two is proposed based upon a close reading of the evidence.

Legends of Black Dogs have long been part of British folkore, such apparitions are often described as being bigger than an ordinary dog, with fiery or glowing red eyes and prone to vanish suddenly. This short article examines one such legend associated with the town of Whitby and the North Yorkshire coastline and explores its influence both on Bram Stoker in his creation of Dracula, and on the memoirs of Church of England exorcist the Rev Dr Donald Omand.

In December 2015 there has been published the most comprehensive bibliography on “UFO waves,” one of the most defining features of UFO phenomena.
It is scientifically imperative that a synthesis of all research be achieved in order to appraise the knowledge acquired over the years.
The present essay invites the participation of both UFO students and academic researchers to review all work done to date on UFO waves and flaps.
This multidisciplinary and collective experience is unprecedented in the history of ufology, and the reader is invited to join the project.

This note is inspired by a series of recently published essays about the eclectic output of Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), and namely by the debate concerning Etruscan survivals in modern folklore. Moving from some additional observations and new evidence, the author suggests that such problems ought to be tackled in the context of a wider comparative framework concerning the general problem of the continuity of theonyms from the classical to the modern world. This operation – it is suggested – should be implemented using the perspective of both dialectology and historical linguistics.

As is well known, the Western worldview brings into play an extended colour-coded cultural model known as the Great Chain of Being, grounded in a mutually exclusive, asymmetric opposition between ‘black’ and ‘white’. In contrast, the Basque model introduces complementary colour-coded oppositions consisting of ‘black’ and ‘red’. The Basque dataset model should not be understood as merely some kind of inversion of the Western one, but rather as being composed of a radically different set of cognitive alignments. Nonetheless, there are junctures where the reader may be able to identify a certain overlap between the component parts of the two systems. Moreover, in the case of the Basque model it is clear that these alignments harken back to earlier indigenous pan-European beliefs in the efficacy of the colour black, its intrinsic epistemological grounding in notions of fecundity and wholeness as well as the positive role of black animals in general.

So far our provisional research results argue for the following scenario: that in the case of Europe the powerful life-giving and protecting characteristics associated previously with the colour black have been distorted, although not totally eradicated from the consciousness of Europeans, in part because of the influence of the Catholic Church and the Inquisitional authorities. The task of countering black’s positive polarity was central to the Church’s efforts to win converts. Given that the colour black was a key component in the competing eco-centric cosmology, attempts to assign a different value to it constituted an assault on one of the principle tenets of the indigenous interpretative grid. The fact that the colour black continues to have a highly charged aura about it – the sudden appearance of a black cat still generates a certain level of uneasiness in modern urban dwellers – testifies to the resilient nature of the older eco-centric cosmology: it has not been forgotten.

In contrast to the hierarchical anthropocentric cultural model encountered in and propagated by the ontological metaphors encountered in the Western dataset, we allege that those found in the Basque dataset derive their vitality from this earlier pan-European eco-centric cosmology, grounded in a different myth of origins, namely, in the belief that humans descend from bears. Reflexes of the belief in the sacredness of bears are still encountered in the rich folkloric traditions and practices of Euskal Herria.