Migration in childhood and its impact on national identity construction among migrants from Northern Ireland

While there is currently only a tiny literature available on Northern Ireland migration, nothing at all has as yet been published relating to the subject of the province's child migrants. This paper focuses on the migration experiences of individuals who migrated as children to and from Northern Ireland, based on interview narratives collected during the course of two studies on contemporary migration from Ireland, North and South, conducted from 2004 to 2008. In all cases, these experiences triggered identity issues for the individuals which have played out subsequently in their lives in different ways. In particular, the author seeks to understand how the memory of these events continues to construct present realities for these individuals. What awareness did these children have of sectarianism, of the Northern Ireland conflict? What was their reception in the host country and upon return to Northern Ireland? How have these experiences contributed to their identities in the present and their sense of belonging to Ireland, North and South?     

Labour after Land Reform: The Precarious Livelihoods of Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe

What happens to labour when major redistributive land reform restructures a system of settler colonial agriculture? This article examines the livelihoods of former farmworkers on large‐scale commercial farms who still live in farm compounds after Zimbabwe's land reform. Through a mix of surveys and in‐depth biographical interviews, four different types of livelihood are identified, centred on differences in land access. These show how diverse, but often precarious, livelihoods are being carved out, representing the ‘fragmented classes of labour’ in a restructured agrarian economy. The analysis highlights the tensions between gaining new freedoms, notably through access to land, and being subject to new livelihood vulnerabilities. The findings are discussed in relation to wider questions about the informalization of the economy and the role of labour and employment in a post‐settler agrarian economy, where the old ‘farmworker’ label no longer applies.     

Precarious Democratization and Local Dynamics in Niger: Micro–Politics in Zinder

Literature on the African state often finds it hard to specify what is state and what is not. The closer one gets to a particular political landscape, the more apparent it becomes that many institutions have something of a twilight character. This article argues that studies of local politics in Africa should focus on how the public authority of institutions waxes and wanes and how political competition among individuals and organizations expresses the notion of state and public authority. This is explored in the context of contemporary political struggles in Niger, played out in three different arenas in the region of Zinder around 1999, as home–town associations, chieftaincies and vigilante groups all take on the mantle of public authority in their dealings with what they consider to be their antithesis, the ‘State’.     

Precarious Conditions: A Note on Counter‐Insurgency in Africa after 1945

This paper looks at the politics of surfaces, and the practices of veiling (and unveiling) and of white men wearing blackface in counter‐insurgency efforts in post‐war Africa. The sten gun beneath the veil, the unveiled woman with a bomb in her handbag and the counter‐gangs masquerading as African guerillas all embody specific kinds of violence; they also embody a political imaginary in which racial and cultural lines are more fluid than previous studies of these periods suggest; indeed, they raise questions about what makes a race, a gender or a regiment: are racial and national categories learned, mimicked, or are they literally skin deep? My question, however, is not why do people dress up as guerillas or as Western women to wreak havoc on their enemies, but how historians of post‐war Africa might understand such actions. To this end I want to read accounts of counter‐insurgency, Fanon's famous essay, the memoirs of British soldiers in Kenya and Rhodesian soldiers in Rhodesia and some of the volumes of Rhodesian wartime fiction through the lens of transgender literature, looking at how various crossings, and the multiple markers thereof, shed light on broader issues of hierarchy, race and gender at the time of decolonisation.     

Harvest Rites in Ireland

LES FONCTIONS MENTALES DANS LES SOCIÉTÉS INFÉRIEURES. Par L. LÉVY-BRUHL. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1910. 8vo, pp. 461. Reviewed by E. A. Hooton.

THE FOLK-LORE OF HEREFORDSHIRE. Collected from Oral and Printed Sources. By ELLA MARY LEATHER. Intro, by EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND. Sidgwick &; Jackson, 1912. Large 8vo, pp. xxviii + 288. Ill. Reviewed by Charlotte S. Burne.

JOURNAL OF THE FOLK-SONG SOCIETY. NO. 16 (Vol. IV., Part iii., December 1911). A Collection of one hundred and five Songs of Occupation from the Western Isles of Scotland. Compiled by Miss FRANCES TOLMIE. 19 Berners Street, W., 1911. 4to, xiv, 143–278 + ix. Reviewed by K. W. Grant.

LA RELIGIONE PRIMITIVA IN SARDEGNA. By RAFFAELE PETTAZZONI. Piacenza: Societá Editrice Pontremolese, 1912. 8vo, pp. xxiii + 253. Reviewed by R. R. Marett.

LA CHANSON POPULAIRE DE L'ILE DE CORSE. Par AUSTIN DE CROZE. Avec conclusion de M. PAUL FONTANA. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1911. 16mo, pp. xv + 188. Reviewed by A. M. Spoer.

LE LÉGENDAIRE DU MONT SAINT-MICHEL. Par ÉTIENNE DUPONT. Paris: Robert Duval, 1911. Sm. 8vo, pp. xlvii + 173.

THEMIS. A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. By JANE ELLEN HARRISON. With an Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek Tragedy by Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, and a Chapter on the Origin of the Olympic Games by Mr. F. M. CORNFORD. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1912. 8vo, pp. xxxii + 559. Ill. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

LA SOCIÉTÉ MUSULMANE DU MAGHRIB. MAGIE ET RELIGION DANS L'AFRIQUE DU NORD. Par EDMOND DOUTTÉ. Alger: Typographie Adolphe Jourdan, 1909. 8vo, pp. vi + 617. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

THE SUK : THEIR LANGUAGE AND FOLKLORE. By MERVYN W. H. BEECH. With Intro, by Sir Charles Eliot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. 8vo, pp. xxiv + 152. Maps and ill. Reviewed by A. R. Wright.

THE LAND OF UZ. By ABDULLAH MANSÛR (G. Wyman Bury). Macmillan, 1911. 8vo, pp. xxvii + 354. Ill. Reviewed by Hans H. Spoer.

MATERINSKAYA FILIACIYA v VOSTOCHNOY 1 CENTRALNOY AZII. [Mother-right in Eastern and Central Asia]. V?p. 1. Materinskaya Filiaciya u Kitaycev, Koreycev i Yaponcev [Mother-right in China, Korea, and Japan]. V?p. 2. Materinskaya Filiaciya u Tibetcev, Mongolov, Myaocz?, Lolo i Tai [Mother-right among the Tibetans, Mongols, Miaotzu, Lolos, and Tai]. By NICHOLAS MATSOKIN. Vladivostock, 1910–11. 8vo, pp. 40, iv + 147. Reviewed by M. Trophimoff.     

Anglo-Norman Parks in Medieval Ireland

Abstract

Lincoln Cathedral's Angel Choir was built in the second half of the thirteenth century to house the shrine of St Hugh of Lincoln, canonised in 1220. Although he was never a major saint, the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln sought to emulate the settings newly created for more venerable saints by constructing a completely new building to house his shrine. Despite considerable study of the Angel Choir the site of the shrine has not been established, neither has the site of the original burial. This is perhaps the more surprising when it is considered that contemporary documentation survives to describe the events of St Hugh's death and burial. There is sufficient evidence within the cathedral to reconstruct the sites of the original burial and the later shrines and this is supported by documentary evidence, so far overlooked, that is presented here.     

Folklore from Ireland

THE NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA By A. W. HOWITT, D.Sc Macmillan &; Co. 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

WEST AFRICAN BELIEFS. Reviewed by A. Lang.

ZWEI JAHRE UNTER DEN KANNIBALEN DER SALOMO-INSELN : Reiseerlebnisse und Schilderunge von Land und Leuten. By CARL RIBBE. 352 pp. 86 figures in the text. 14 plates. 10 diagrams and 3 maps. Dresden-Blasewitz, Elbgau-Buchdruckerei, H. Beyer, 1903. Reviewed by A. C. Haddon.

TRADITIONS OF THE SKIDI PAWNEE. BY GEORGE A. DORSEY (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, vol. viii.). Boston, 1904, pp. xxvi, 366, with 15 Plates. Reviewed by N. W. Thomas.

A PHONETICAL STUDY OF THE ESKIMO LANGUAGE, BASED ON OBSERVATIONS MADE ON A JOURNEY IN NORTH GREENLAND, 1900–1901. By WILLIAM THALBITZER. Reprint from Meddelelser om Gronland, vol. xxxi. Copenhagen, 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

SOCIOLOGICAL PAPERS: 1904. With an INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS by JAMES BRYCE. Published for the Sociological Society. Macmillan. 1905. Reviewed by Charlotte S. Burne.

STUDIES IN ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. By H. M. CHADWICK. Cambridge University Press. Reviewed by F. M. Stenton.

JOURNAL OF THE FOLK-SONG SOCIETY, Vol. I., Pt. 5. Spottiswoode &; Co., 1904. Reviewed by L. M. Eyre.     

Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1998

Abstract

Historic Building Investigations and selective excavations carried out during recent conservation works have shed new light on St Mary's Guildhall, Boston (Lincolnshire), built by an internationally significant religious fraternity in one of the most important ports of medieval England. Dendrochronological dating of the guildhall indicates a construction date of c 1390. This is significantly earlier than had previously been supposed and suggests a close link between the construction of the guildhall and the grant of a royal licence of incorporation to the guild in 1392. It makes the guildhall one of the earliest securely dated brick buildings in Lincolnshire and is important evidence of investment during a period when Boston was experiencing severe economic decline. Multidisciplinary analysis of the archaeology of the building and some of the guild's surviving documentary records enables a reconstruction of the original form and function of the guildhall and its now-lost material culture. Comparative analysis of Boston with other surviving provincial guildhalls begins to shed light on the emergence of a distinctive type of public architecture in pre-modern England.     

Medieval Britain and Ireland in 2017

This section of the journal comprises two core sets of reports linked to work in 2017: finds and analyses relating to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and site-specific discoveries and reports in medieval Britain and Ireland (MB&I), with a selection of highlighted projects. For the PAS report, reviews on coin and non-coin finds and on specific research angles are presented. For MB&I, the Society is most grateful to all contributors (of field units, museums, universities, developers, specialist groups and individuals) who have provided reports on finds, excavations, field-surveys and building analyses for 2017. For MB&I, see below for the format and content of the Fieldwork Highlights section and for contact details of the compilers. Annual Specialist Groups Reports appear in the Society’s Newsletter.