Source File: The Elf Dancers of Cae Caled (original) (raw)
Related papers
Wirt Sikes, British Goblins: Welsh Folklore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions (London: Sampson, 1880): This controversial book (poorly sourced) is an exploration of Welsh folklore and mythology. The author begins with a discussion on the ancient belief in fairies, focusing on Welsh mythology and stories concerning the fairy king, Gwyn ap Nudd, and the green meadows of the sea. He then provides a classification of Welsh fairies, including the Ellyllon (elves), the Coblynau (mine fairies), the Bwbach (household fairies), the Gwragedd Annwn (lake fairies), and the Gwyllion (mountain fairies). He details the different characteristics and habits of each type of fairy. The author then transitions to a discussion on ghosts and other supernatural entities found in Welsh lore, including the different types of ghosts and the various stories associated with them. He covers topics like haunting houses, transporting spirits, and the different types of spirits believed to haunt the Welsh countryside. The author then delves into Welsh beliefs about bells, wells, stones, and dragons, exploring the various legends and superstitions surrounding these objects. He connects these beliefs with ancient Druidism, suggesting a possible historical basis for some of the beliefs. The final section of the book focuses on Welsh customs and traditions associated with different days and seasons, exploring the significance of these traditions and their origins in both Celtic and Christian cultures. The author discusses the history of the rituals and festivals celebrated throughout the year, such as the New Year’s Day apple gift, Mothering Sunday, the wearing of the leek on St. David's Day, the tradition of the Mari Lwyd (a horse's skull) on Twelfth Night, and the tradition of the cutty wren (a wren placed in a cage). He also provides a detailed account of the tradition of the "Bidding," a custom in which a couple about to be married invites their neighbors to a feast, providing them with food, drink, and gifts. The book concludes with a discussion on the origins of Welsh folklore and mythology, presenting the realistic theory and the poetico-religious theory. The author argues that the realistic theory, which holds that fairies originated from real people who were later mythologized, is not entirely convincing, and prefers to view the origin of fairies as rooted in the ancient mythology of the world. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical and cultural context of these beliefs and the ways in which they have been shaped over time by both pagan and Christian influences.
The meanings of elf and elves in medieval England
2004
Abstract: This thesis investigates the character and role of non-Christian belief in medieval societies, and how we can reconstruct it using written sources. It focuses on Anglo-Saxon culture, contextualising Anglo-Saxon material with analyses of Middle English, Older Scots, Scandinavian and Irish texts. We lack Anglo-Saxon narratives about elves (ælfe, singular ælf), but the word ælf itself is well-attested in Old English texts.
Spirit Beings in European Folklore 4
Spirit Beings in European Folklore 4, 2022
Compendium 4 of the Spirit Beings in European Folklore-series covers an area that starts with Wallonia and continues via France and the Pyrenees, through the Iberian Peninsula, to Italy and Greece. This results in a very diverse and colourful collection of spirit beings, due to the many included Basque nature-spirits or Ireluak, the Spanish Duendes, the Celtic spirits of Brittany, the prankster Italian Folletti and the creatures from Greece. Some creatures from Breton folklore are particularly gruesome, such as the hollow-eyed Ankou, the Werewolf-like Bugul-nôz, or the ghostly and Will-o’-the-wisp-like Yan-gant-y-tan, who roams the night roads with his five lit candles. Most Italian ghosts are less gloomy, while the Iberian Peninsula is home to everything ranging from the ‘Beauty’ to the ‘Beast’. Compendium 4 contains – amongst other things – many kinds of dwarf-spirits or Goblins (Lutins, Nutons, Folletti, Farfadettes, Korrigans, Minairons) various seductive and feminine spring creatures, Wild Man-varieties (Basajaunak, Jentilak) and an extensive section on the Incubus-Succubus. It is fascinating to discover how many types of European spirit beings (from Kobold to many female spring-spirits), described in the other Compendiums, can be traced back to creatures from Ancient Greece. Compendium 4 discusses 270 spirit beings in detail, includes their alternative names, additional references to subordinate beings and a unique selection of illustrations.
Medieval society had an intimate relationship with the afterlife and more specifically the ghosts that signified its existence.While the majority of ghostly encounters tend to be religiously orientated cautionary tales designed to reinforce Christian values,some Monastic recorders also noted sightings of a mysterious Green People.Generally appearing to onlookers within or from a woodland environment these beings were taken as Faerie Folk by some or members of an alien race by others.Consigned to the annals of Folklore,such accounts may not be so absurd as they first seem.This paper offers an explanation of the Green Folk phenomenon of medieval times.
1999
Most scholars date the serious study of children's folklore to two nineteenthcentury collections of children's games: The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland: Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing According to the Variants Extant and Recorded in Different Parts of the Kingdom (1894-98) by Lady Alice Bertha Gomme and Games and Songs of American Children (1883) by William Wells Newell, the first secretary of the American Folklore Society. Lady Alice was married to the distinguished British scholar Sir George Laurence Gomme, and together they formed a successful research team. Consistent with Victorian mores, she limited her studies almost exclusively to children's games while her husband's interests ranged much more widely. The two of them intended to edit a multivolume Dictionary of British Folklore with Traditional Games as Part I, but the project was never completed. The Gommes were part of the intellectual milieu that adhered to the theory of cultural survivals, and Traditional Games reflects that discredited bias. Lady Alice regarded the games in her vast collection as remnants from the ancient past that reflected the ideas and practices of primitive peoples. She arranged the games alphabetically, which, as one historian has pointed out, "camouflaged Lady Gomme's primary intent, to reconstruct the evolutionary ladder of children's pastimes" (Dorson 1968,27). For example, she decided that the game of "Sally Water" originated as a pre-Celtic "marriage ceremonial involving water worship,'" and that "London Bridge" echoed an ancient foundation sacrifice. She gathered her data from a network of retrospective adult correspondents rather than from direct fieldwork. Dorothy Howard writes the following in her introduction to the 1963 edition: The games in her Dictionary, it must therefore be inferred, are games belonging to Lady Alice's childhood or earlier and not necessarily 12 WHO ARE THE FOLKLORISTS OF CHILDHOOD? 2 THE COMPLEXITY OF CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE Rosemary Levy Zumwalt When I first started work in children's folklore, I dutifully asked my five, six-, and seven-year-old informants all the prescribed questions: Where did you learn that? Why do you think it's funny? What do you call it? They would, after the weeks passed, bear this with strained patience. With their heads cocked to one side and their eyes narrowed, they would answer, "I didn't learn it from anybody. I made it up!" "Can't you see why it's funny? It's funny, that's all!" I would persist and get the answers I needed for my collection. Now, years later, as I look back at this initial study of children's folklore (Zumwalt 1972, 1976), I am struck with the richness the children were offering me. At the time, the rhythm, the lyrics, and the image captivated me. I focused on symbol, the ideal little girl in folklore. And I emphasized tradition, the creation and continuity of this image. I likened it to the formation of stalactites, the concentrated accretion over centuries, a drop at a time, forming a multifaceted image. The ideal little girl in folklore could, according to the refraction of light from her crystalline image, shine with innocence, glitter with enticement, or gleam with lust. The ideal little girl was present in the folklore, and she was important. Yet, coupled with this ideal little girl portrayed in the texts was the real little girl who performed the jump-rope songs: I am a Pretty Little Dutch Girl All dressed in blue. And these are the things I like to do: Salute to the captain. Curtsey to the king. And show my pants to the u.S. Marines! This was the same little girl who would throw down her jump rope and run to the baseball diamond to play what she classified as a boy's game. The children in my early folklore study were presenting me with the complexity of their lives. That I chose to study one aspect, the image as revealed in the text, is understandable. Part of the leverage one needs to launch an undertaking is just such a focus. That I now recognize the text and context, the ideal and the real, the conservative and the innovation, adds to my wonder of the child's world of folklore. I would like to reflect on what I see as the complexity of children's folklore, a complexity that has sometimes been overlooked for a simpler view. An approach that was predicted on the simple nature of the child was nineteenth-century cultural evolutionary theory. In this framework, the child was equated with the savage. In much twentieth-century literature on children's folklore, the equation remains. For an understanding of cultural evolutionary theory as it pertains to children, we must turn to the works of