The Transformations of Biddy Early: From Local Reports of Magical Healing to Globalised New Age Fantasies

The literatures dealing with legends and vernacular narratives, on the one hand, and collective memory, on the other, are rarely brought to bear on each other. Following a discussion of the classificatory focus of the legend literature, and the lack of agreement about classification in that literature, this paper draws on the collective memory literature to suggest a focus on process. In particular, it suggests that we should pay attention to a historical process during which local reports of “known” people and happenings may be transformed, in the course of their incorporation into wider spheres of discourse, into legends, which may, through further chronological and spatial distancing from their original context, become fantasies. This tentative framework is used to analyse how the local reputation of Biddy Early, a well-known nineteenth-century “wise woman” of County Clare, Ireland, spread—originally through the work of Lady Gregory, in particular—to become first national, then international and, finally, in the age of the Internet, global. In the course of this long process, first-hand reports of her skills and powers eventually became transformed into free-floating marketing devices and New Age fantasies.     

Bridewealth,dowry, property,and economics

Jack Goody and S. J. Tambiah. Bridewealth and Dowry. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology 7. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973. ix + 169 pp. Tables, figures, notes, and bibliography. $11.50.     

Mormon History,Text, Colour,and Rites

Mormonism's growth from its 1830 inception to its 2005 near twelve million world membership, has not only initiated a debate over whether, perhaps, it is likely to become the next world‐religion after Islam, ¹ 1 Stark, Rodney , “The Rise of a New World Faith,” Review of Religious Research 26 (1984 ): 18 – 27 .
but has, in recent decades, also witnessed the publication of numerous books that help foster an interest in what is already becoming a distinctive field of study. Though none of the four books reviewed here constitutes an introductory overview, ² 2 For which see, Thomas O'Dea, The Mormons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Jan Shipps, The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Douglas J. Davies, Introduction to Mormonism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
each introduces a set of major issues within contemporary Mormon studies and engages, respectively, with faith‐related attitudes to historical material, the Book of Mormon, the changing status of black males in the church, and Freemasonry's impact on Mormonism's origin.     

Gardens, Legitimation, and Resistance

Eighteenth-century garden design has been interpreted in terms of legitimation, a tool with which elites attempted to maintain power and authority over marginalized groups. But most acts of aesthetic landscaping, it can be argued, were primarily directed not towards the poor but to rival groups within the propertied. Similarly, any opposition to the dominant ideology expressed in the design of landscape was mainly mounted by disaffected groups within the ranks of the franchised. In so far as the poor in this period inscribed their mark upon the land, it was in acts of vandalism or reappropriation which have left little direct trace in the archaeological record.