Society Meetings and Folklore Notes

THE ‘DISCIPLINA CLERICALIS’ OF PETRUS ALFONSI. Translated and Edited by EBERHARD HERNES. Translated into English by P. R. QUARRIE. (Routledge &; Kegan Paul) 1977. £5.95. Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.

EY UP MI DUCK. By RICHARD SCOLLINS and JOHN TITFORD, Parts 1 and 2. Ilkeston (Schollins and Titford) 1976. Pp. 95p. Reviewed by J. D. A. Widdowson.

THE FOLKLORE OF ORKNEY &;SHETLAND. By ERNEST W. MARWIOC. London (B. T. Batsford) 1975. Drawings by GAY JOHN GALSWORTHY. Pp. 215. £4.50. Reviewed by Theo Brown.

TRADITIONAL ROMANCE &; TALE. How Stories Mean. By ANNE WILSON. Ipswich (D. S. Brewer/Rowman &; Littlefield) 1976. Pp. xii and 116. £5.00. Reviewed by Theo Brown.

WESTCOUNTRY WORDS &; WAYS. By K. C. PHILLIPPS. Newton Abbot (David &; Charles) 1976. Pp. 144. Reviewed by Theo Brown.

THE ARMED PROLOGUE. A Hamlet Sequence. By WILLIAM MONTGOMERIE. Pp. 5–22. Reviewed by Theo Brown.

ENZYKLOPÄDIE DES MÄRCHENS. Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung. Ed. KURT RANKE. Vol. 1, issues 3–5. Berlin (Walter de Grǔyter) 1976/77. Cols. 577–1406. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

Haralds Biezais, Lichtgott der alten Letten. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Åboensis VIII. Uppsala, 1976. Pp. 210. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.     

Minutes of Meetings.

EUROPEAN FOLKLORE IN AMERICA. By REIDAR TH. CHRISTIANSEN Universitetsforlaget. Oslo, Scandinavian University Books, 1962. Reviewed by Amabel Williams-Ellis.

RAIN IN INDIAN LIFE AND LORE. Edited by SANKAR SEN GUPTA. Foreworded (sic) by Nirmal Kumar Bose. Calcutta, Indian Publications, 1963. Reviewed by J. H. Hutton.

THE WHITE GOD OF THE AZTECS. By WILLIAM A. BERG. Pp. 412. Boston, Bruce Humphries, 1961. Reviewed by C. A. Burland.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY. Selections edited by SOL TAX from the ‘encyclopedic inventory’ prepared under the Chairmanship of A. L. KROEBER. Phoenix Books, 1963. 21s. net. Reviewed by C. A. Burland.

Tire REALM OF GHOSTS. By ERIC MAPLE. Robert Hale, 21s. Reviewed by Geoffrey Palmer.

THE FOLKTALES OF ISRAEL. Edited by Dov NOY with the assistance of DAN BEN-AMOS. Translated by GENE BAHARAV: Folktales of the World, General Editor Richard M. Dorson. University of Chicago Press. Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.

ANCIENT FESTIVALS OF ‘SATURNALIA’ TYPE. By PHOTEINE P. BOURBOULIS. Thessaloniki, 1963. Pp. 60. n.p. Reviewed by E. O. James.

WITCHCRAFT: EUROPEAN AND AFRICAN. By GEOFFREY PARRINDER. Faber and Faber, 1963. 25s. Reviewed by A. W. Smith.

‘SCHLÄGE’ ALS STRAFE. Ein Bestandteil der heutigen Familiensitte in volkskundlicher Sicht. By WÄLTER HAVERNICK. Hamburg, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1964. Pp. 164; 12 diagrams and 43 illustrations. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

DIE ÖSTERREICHISCHEN SCHÜTZENGILDEN UND IHRE FESTE. 1500–1750. Studien zu ihrer Geschichte. By H. GOJA. Vienna, Verlag Notring der wissenschaftlichen Verbände Österreichs, 1963. Pp. 150; 2 plates. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

ZAUBERPFLANZEN UND HEXENTRÄNKE. BRAUCHTUM UND ABERGLAUBE. By H. MARZELL. Kosmos-Bibliothek, Vol. 241. Stuttgart, Francksche Verlagshandlung, 1963. Pp. 88; 25 text illustrations, 8 plates. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

CLARE PRIORY (SEVEN CENTURIES OF A SUFFOLK HOUSE). By K. W. BARNARDISTON. Cambridge, W. Heffer, 1962. 21s. Reviewed by A. A. Waugh.

THE TRADITIONAL TUNES OF THE CHILD BALLADS. With their Texts According to the Extant Records of Great Britain and America. Volume II. By BERNARD HARRIS BRONSON. Princeton University Press, 1962. Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.

ROUND THE WORLD FAIRY TALES. Re-told by AMABEL WILLIAMS-ELLIS. Illustrated by William Stobbs. Blackie. 25s. Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.

FOLK LIFE COLLECTION AND CLASSIFICATION. By J. W. Y. HIGGS, M.A.: Published by the Museums Association, 1963. Pp. 58. 7s. Reviewed by R. U. Sayce.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS AND OTHER PIECES. By ARTHUR WALEY. George Allen &; Unwin Ltd. Pp. 320. 32s. Reviewed by W. H. Hudspeth.

MORE TALES FROM THE FENS. By W. H. BARRETT. Edited by ENID PORTER. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. 25s. Reviewed by Carmen Blacker.

ATLAS DER DEUTSCHEN VOLKSKUNDE, NEUE FOLGE. Erläuterungen zur 2. Lieferung. Edited by M. ZENDER. Marburg, N. G. Elwert, 1963, Pp. 233–528; 6 illustrations, 31 text maps. Maps: NF 13–24. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

OESTERREICHISCHER VOLKSKUNDEATLAS. Edited by E. BURGSTALLER and A. HELBOK. 1st issue. Linz, 1959. 13 maps; comments, pp. 95, index of places, pp. 125. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

WITCHES. Investigating an Ancient Religion. By T. C. LETHBRIDGE. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. 21s. Reviewed by A. W. Smith.     

Minutes of Meetings Annual General Meeting, 1956

This article examines the place of the mother-in-law in Sephardic folklore. From proverbs to narratives, to popular songs, the folklore has a singular message: that the kinship relationship between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law is poisonous. The authors conducted fieldwork among the Sephardim of the historic Ottoman Empire, Israel and the United States.     

Proceedings at the Meetings of the Archaeological Institute

The excavator has two advantages over his architect colleague in the study of ancient buildings: he can take his studies back long before the date of the earliest surviving vernacular buildings; and, by beginning his researches at ground level and going down, he can study parts that other researchers cannot reach. This paper, arising out of excavations undertaken in medieval York over the past eight years, seeks to compare what is now known about the underpinnings of York's medieval buildings with the development established, in the main by Denys Spittle's colleagues in the York office of the RCHM, from the above-ground evidence, the surviving buildings. It is offered to Mr Spittle, a scholar whose studies usually stop at ground level, from one whose studies as often as not begin there, on the one hand in recognition of the patient tolerance he has shown of the enthusiasms of the excavator during his incumbancy of the Institute's secretaryship; and on the other in the hopes that future vernacular building studies will increasingly show a marrying of the evidence from excavations with that from the standing buildings.     

Proceedings at Meetings of the Royal Archaeological Institute

Neolithic settlements are rare on the British mainland, and England in particular (Cooney 1997; Thomas 1999. 8–9 for somewhat differing comments}. One claimed site occurs at Portinscale 4 km west of the Castlerigg stone circle in the English Lake District where a number of stone axes and other artefacts were found in 1901. The finds were reported to consist of four unpolished stone axes, a number of ‘chippings of similar stone’ and of a ‘log…in an upright position, with the top rudely chipped as if by some clumsy instrument’ (Rawnsley 1902). The remains have sometimes been interpreted as those of a possible settlement where the axes were ‘finished’ or polished (Manby 1965, 3; cf. Fell 1950, 9), although Briggs (1989} noted that the axes also may have been used unpolished. The site is important in any discussion of the production of stone axes in the central Lake District (Bradley and Edmonds 1993). This paper reports the result of small-scale excavations designed to assess whether any material of archaeological interest survived on site and reviews the evidence reported by Rawnsley and that of stray finds of axes from the vicinity of Keswick and Castlerigg (Illus. 1).     

Proceedings at Monthly Meetings of the Royal Archaeological Institute

The importance of training areas to the militarization of the landscape in the twentieth century is well recognized, but many sites remain unexplored and unrecorded. This article discusses the archaeology of a Second World War landscape at Westleton Walks, near Dunwich in Suffolk. The principal remains are those of a mock German ‘Hedgehog’ defensive position built in the spring of 1943 for use in Exercise ‘Kruschen’, an extended trial of techniques and equipment that went on to inform the successful Allied campaign in north-west Europe the following year. The archaeology of the site is significant both as a case study of a Second World War training landscape and also because the remains can be given a precise historical context.