This stunning Russian lacquer-style package of twenty-five full-color cards and accompanying book combines the beauty of Russian lacquer box art with the fun of an age-old gypsy system for revealing your path in life.

    Hutton draws upon a wealth of new data to reveal some important rethinking about Christianization and the decline of paganism.

    A retelling of the old Russian fairy tale in which beautiful Vasilissa uses the help of her doll to escape from the clutches of the witch Baba Yaga.

    A study of Arthurian romance and legend which draws together the different strands of Arthurian myth, from sources as diverse as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory, Chretien de Troyes, the Mabinogion, and the English Gawain cycles.

    Includes unpaginated general index and index of first lines.

    There are 350 substantial entries, in alphabetical order from Aban, a 6th-century saint, to Weather, all with full references to sources, a synopsis of relevant stories, and discussion of their origin, nature and development. These are complimented by a genre-list of material under various headings, such as Mythical Lore, Fianna Cycle, Ulster Cycle, King Cycles, Peoples and Traditions, Religious Lore, and Folk Custom and Belief. There is also a wealth of genealogical detail, indicating how historical and social circumstances have influenced the growth and spread of Irish lore. DAITHI O HOGAIN, Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, is an international authority on folklore and traditional literature.

    In this absorbing work, Lawlor explores the essence of their culture as a source of and guide to transforming our own world view. While not romanticizing the past or suggesting a return to the life of the hunter/gatherer, Voices of the First Day enables us to enter into the mentality of the oldest continuous culture on earth and gain insight into our own relationship with the earth and to each other.This book offers an opportunity to suspend our values, prejudices, and Eurocentrism and step into the Dreaming to discover:• A people who rejected agriculture, architecture, writing, clothing, and the subjugation of animals• A lifestyle of hunting and gathering that provided abundant food of unsurpassed nutritional value • Initiatic and ritual practices that hold the origins of all esoteric, yogic, magical, and shamanistic traditions • A sexual and emotional life that afforded diversity and fluidity as well as marital and social stability • A people who valued kinship, community, and the law of the Dreamtime as their greatest "possessions." • Language whose richness of structure and vocabulary reveals new worlds of perception and comprehension. • A people balanced between the Dreaming and the perceivable world, in harmony with all species and living each day as the First Day. Voices of the First Day is illustrated throughout with more than 100 extraordinary photographs, bark paintings, line drawings and engravings. Many of these photographs are among the earliest ever made of the Aboriginal people and are shown here for the first time.

    The contributors to this volume focus on these "many" Ramayanas.While most scholars continue to rely on Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana as the authoritative version of the tale, the contributors to this volume do not. Their essays demonstrate the multivocal nature of the Ramayana by highlighting its variations according to historical period, political context, regional literary tradition, religious affiliation, intended audience, and genre. Socially marginal groups in Indian society—Telugu women, for example, or Untouchables from Madhya Pradesh—have recast the Rama story to reflect their own views of the world, while in other hands the epic has become the basis for teachings about spiritual liberation or the demand for political separatism. Historians of religion, scholars of South Asia, folklorists, cultural anthropologists—all will find here refreshing perspectives on this tale.

    Inside the mysterious forest, Elaine meets Tamlynne, an enchanted young knight in the court of the Elfin Queen. Elaine and Tamlynne fall in love, but in order for Tamlynne to escape the elves, Elaine must pay a terrible price. In the end, mortal love proves stronger than the power of the Elfin Queen and the two lovers are set free. Beautifully illustrated by Robin Muller, this edition of The Nightwood is sure to enchant fairytale lovers of all ages.

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    Each chapter is packed with botanical, historical, herbal, practical, spiritual, mythological, folk magic and even culinary information. A must have guidebook for working with trees on a spiritual and/or herbal level.

    In folklore, he has been in the vanguard of important theoretical and methodological movements. In Chicano studies, he stands as one of the premier exponents.Paredes's books are widely known and easily available, but his scholarly articles are not so familiar or accessible. To bring them to a wider readership, Richard Bauman has selected eleven essays that eloquently represent the range and excellence of Paredes's work. The hardcover edition of Folklore and Culture was published in 1993. This paperback edition will make the book more accessible to the general public and more practical for classroom use.

    Mayan art and architecture were the inspiration for the spectacular cut-paper artwork.

    Written over fifteen years, the essays—six of them previously unpublished—fall into three parts. Part I deals with matters "Indo-European" in a relatively unproblematized way, exploring a set of haunting images that recur in descriptions of the Otherworld from many cultures. While Lincoln later rejects this methodology, these chapters remain the best available source of data for the topics they address. In Part II, Lincoln takes the data for each essay from a single culture area and shifts from the topic of dying to that of killing. Of particular interest are the chapters connecting sacrifice to physiology, a master discourse of antiquity that brought the cosmos, the human body, and human society into an ideologically charged correlation. Part III presents Lincoln's most controversial case against a hypothetical Indo-European protoculture. Reconsidering the work of the prominent Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil, Lincoln argues that Dumézil's writings were informed and inflected by covert political concerns characteristic of French fascism. This collection is an invaluable resource for students of myth, ritual, ancient societies, anthropology, and the history of religions. Bruce Lincoln is professor of humanities and religious studies at the University of Minnesota.

    This is the first serious study tracing La Malinche in texts from the conquest period to the present day.

    This translation by Frank Salomon and George L. Urioste marks the first time the Huarochiri Manuscript has been translated into English, making it available to English-speaking students of Andean culture and world mythology and religions.The Huarochiri Manuscript holds a summation of native Andean religious tradition and an image of the superhuman and human world as imagined around A.D. 1600. The tellers were provincial Indians dwelling on the west Andean slopes near Lima, Peru, aware of the Incas but rooted in peasant, rather than imperial, culture. The manuscript is thought to have been compiled at the behest of Father Francisco de Avila, the notorious "extirpator of idolatries." Yet it expresses Andean religious ideas largely from within Andean categories of thought, making it an unparalleled source for the prehispanic and early colonial myths, ritual practices, and historic self-image of the native Andeans.Prepared especially for the general reader, this edition of the Huarochiri Manuscript contains an introduction, index, and notes designed to help the novice understand the culture and history of the Huarochiri-area society. For the benefit of specialist readers, the Quechua text is also supplied.

      Here are Paul Bunyan, that king-sized lumberjack who could fell “ten white pines with a single swing”; John Henry, with his mighty hammer; Mose, old New York’s biggest, bravest fireman; Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind, who could “outgrin, outsnort, outrun, outlift, outsneeze, outsleep, outlie any varmint”; and other uniquely American characters, together in one superb collection.   In the tradition of the original nineteenth-century storytellers, Mary Pope Osborne compiles, edits, and adds her own two cents’ worth—and also supplies fascinating historical headnotes. Michael McCurdy’s robust colored wood engravings recall an earlier time, perfectly capturing all the vitality of the men and women who carved a new country out of the North American wilderness.

    In many cultures, however, fairies are not just the stuff of distant legend or literature: they are real creatures with supernatural powers. The Good People presents nineteen essays that focus on the actual fairies of folklore -- fairies of past and living traditions who affected, and still affect, people's lives in myriad ways.

    Here is a uniquely insightful and engaging look at how humans through the ages have responded to and been influenced by their amphibian neighbors.

    Fired in 1877 for his brief marriage to a black woman, he wandered from New Orleans to New York to the Caribbean before finally settling in Japan where, in a unique act of self-transformation, he became a Japanese patriot and patriarch. Full of excerpts from Hearn's writing, Jonathan Cott's insightful portrayal of an extraordinary life recovers for a Western audience a unique figure of the nineteenth century.

    It not only describes the traditions as they are but also explains how they came to be.

    They come for one purpose: to hear and tell stories at the National Storytelling Festival. The 1992 festival marks the 20th observance of this internationally acclaimed event. To commemorate this milestone we published this anthology of 37 tales drawn from the hundreds of stories that have been told on crisp October days and nights since the festivals inception. Enjoy!!Contents:The wish-ring / Martha Holloway --The walkin' catfish / Doc McConnell --The hole that will not stay filled / Kathryn Windham --Could this be paradise? / Steve Sanfield --The bee, the harp, the mouse, and the bumclock / Gwenda LedBetter --A friend of my father / Maggi Kerr Peirce --Orange cheeks / Jay O'Callahan --The seal skin / Lynn Rubright --Wicked John and the devil / Jackie Torrence --Lincoln's famous beard / Lucille and Bren Breneman --A bell for shorty / Jim May --The woodcutter's story / Nancy Schimmel --How Caedmon got his hymn / Robert P. Creed --Cindy Ellie / Mary Carter Smith --Cap o'Rushes / Ellin Greene --The legend of Charley Parkhurst / Hector Lee --One day, one night / Joe Hayes --Flowers and freckle cream / Elizabeth Ellis --The princess and the dove / Mary Hamilton --The first motorcycle in Black Mountain / David Holt --Marie Jolie / J.J. Reneaux --Carna and the boots of seven strides / Bill Harley --The day the cow ate my britches / Ray Hicks --Possum, Turtle, and the wolves / Doug Elliott --Black hair / Brenda Wong Aoki --The pinch-hitter / Michael Parent --Morgan and the pot o'brains / Milbre Burch --The innkeeper's wise daughter / Peninnah Schram --Willie the bug-man / Susan Klein --A fisherman and his wife / Carol L. Birch --The two sons / Alice McGill --Jack and the silver keys / Duncan Williamson --C-R-A-Z-Y / Donald Davis --The sword of wood / Doug Lipman --The girl and the ghost / Laura Simms --No news / The folktellers --The wise shoemaker of Studena / Syd Lieberman.

    Meet a hen that lays golden eggs and a harp that sings by itself. And don't forget the ogre...A classic fairy tale with rich and dynamic illustrations that will leave you chanting "Fee-fi-fo-fum!"

    A stunning combination of master storytelling and deft translation, with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder.

    Based on his studies and personal shamanic experience, Michael presents the first practical guide to applying this ancient healing art to our modern lives. Through a series of simple exercises and lessons, he teaches the basic shamanic methods of drumming. The focus is on creating sacred space, journeying, power practice, power animals, drum therapy, drum circles and the therapeutic effects of drumming. Whether you are an accomplished percussionist or a total beginner, this user-friendly book will help you harness the power of drumming. Recent studies demonstrate that drumming is a valuable treatment for stress, chronic pain, cancer, stroke, trauma, addictions, mental illness, emotional disorders and a wide range of physical disabilities. The benefits include relaxation, healing, more energy, greater mental clarity, enhanced creativity and deeper self-awareness.

    

    Retells a variety of Native American legends featuring Coyote in the time before the coming of humans, including Coyote Gets His Powers and Coyote and Spider Woman.

    Michael Ann Williams bases much of her study on interviews with some of the people most intimately familiar with her subject: more than fifty individuals born and raised in southwestern North Carolina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their testimony links the perspective of former occupants and the experiential aspects of folk architecture with more traditional scholarly studies.Most scholarship on vernacular architecture emphasizes form and structure and is based primarily on the examination of extant buildings. While Homeplace contains floor plans and historical photographs, it also illustrates how oral history is often a more reliable guide in the interpretation of folk buildings than artifactual or documentary evidence. By foregrounding inhabitants' reminiscences, Williams brings rural Appalachian architecture to life by emphasizing human experience within the dwelling.An examination of universal concerns--continuity and change in the inhabitants' uses and conceptualizations of interior spaces, domestic life and cultural change in southern Appalachia, the shifting importance of formal and informal spaces--Homeplace offers new insights into the folk building tradition and its cultural context that will be most helpful to those seeking a broader understanding of Appalachian life.

    How Anansi Obtained the Sky God's Stories: An African Folktale from the Ashanti Tribe

    The Fables provide a set of pithy lessons and lorals that are as applicable today as when the tales were first recounted orally in ancient times. Eric Vincent’s charming, witty illustrations add an enchanting new dimension to these ageless stories.

    Preston, a nearsighted armadillo. Together, they open up the Cactus Flower Bakery, where the lemonade is always cold and the cake is the best in Texas. Could Stewart's new pair of glasses mean the end of their friendship? Full color.

    The result is a vital and long-needed companion for anyone seeking to understand the Jewish world now and in past centuries. The book describes all the main characters and the legends that have grown up around them; Jewish methods of Biblical interpretation; the framework of Jewish law, literature, and poetry; the festivals of the Jewish Year; the different languages and subgroups within the Jewish community; and the many countries that Jews have lived in, as well as the importance of the Holy Land. But another side of Judaism is also revealed: a world populated by angels and demons, sages and Kabbalists, mythical creatures, lucky and unlucky days and numbers, and the hope for a Messianic age.

    

    Synthesizing data and current thought about the regional systems of the Chacoans and the Hohokam, eleven archaeologists examine settlement patterns, subsistence economy, social organization, and trade, shedding new light on two of the most sophisticated cultures of the prehistoric Southwest.

    Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture.The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.

    Folk Narratives contains tales told for edification or delight, but not thought to be factually true. Folk Legends presents tales the tellers believed to be records of actual events.

    Alan Dundes and Carl Pagter have collected more than two hundred and fifty "signs of the times"--the office memoranda, parodies, cartoons, and poems that daily make their way through copy machines, interoffice mail systems, and fax machines and are affixed to bulletin boards and water coolers. The rich vein of urban folklore tapped by this imaginative volume constitutes a great testament to one of the world's most prolific authors--anonymous. The popularity of the items featured in this timely book is apparent by their reproduction in mass or popular cultural form--as greeting cards, plaques, and bumper stickers--reminding us of the inevitable interplay between folklore and mass culture. Dundes and Pagter clearly demonstrate the existence of folklore in the modern urban technological world and refute the notion that folklore reflects only the past.