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144-582: Thomas Keightley (17 October 1789 – 4 November 1872) was an Irish writer known for his works on mythology and folklore, particularly Fairy Mythology (1828), later reprinted as The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves, and Other Little People (1978, 2000, etc.). Keightley was as an important pioneer in the study of folklore by modern scholars in the field. He was a "comparativist" folklore collector, drawing parallels between tales and traditions across cultures. A circumspect scholar, he did not automatically assume similar tales indicated transmission, allowing for

288-422: A matador 's " montera ", or in less exotic terms, "a strange looking thing like a cocked hat", to quote from the tale " The Lady of Gollerus ". A submersible "cocked hat" also figures in the invented merrow-man tale " The Soul Cages ." The notion that the cohuleen druith is a hat "covered with feathers", stated by O'Hanlon and Yeats arises from taking Croker too literally. Croker did point out that

432-419: A "quantitative mining of the resulting archive, and extraction of distribution patterns in time and space". It is based on the assumption that every text artifact is a variant of the original text. As a proponent of this method, Walter Anderson proposed additionally a Law of Self-Correction, i.e. a feedback mechanism which would keep the variants closer to the original form. It was during the first decades of

576-593: A German folktale), although Thomas Keightley who acknowledged the fabrication claimed that by sheer coincidence, similar folktales were indeed to be found circulated in areas of counties Cork and Wicklow . The male merrow in the story, called Coomara (meaning "sea-hound" ), has green hair and teeth, pig-like eyes, a red nose, grows a tail between his scaly legs, and has stubby fin-like arms. Commentators, starting with Croker and echoed by O'Hanlon and Yeats after him, stated categorically that this description fitted male merrows in general, and ugliness ran generally across

720-458: A Linear World", Donald Fixico describes an alternate concept of time. "Indian thinking" involves "'seeing' things from a perspective emphasizing that circles and cycles are central to world and that all things are related within the Universe." He then suggests that "the concept of time for Indian people has been such a continuum that time becomes less relevant and the rotation of life or seasons of

864-695: A context which is foreign to the original tradition." This definition, offered by the folklorist Hermann Bausinger, does not discount the validity of meaning expressed in these "second hand" traditions. Many Walt Disney films and products belong in this category of folklorism; fairy tales become animated film characters, stuffed animals and bed linens. These manifestations of folklore traditions have their own significance for their audience. Fakelore refers to artifacts which might be termed pseudo-folklore , manufactured items claiming to be traditional. The folklorist Richard Dorson coined this word, clarifying it in his book "Folklore and Fakelore". Current thinking within

1008-461: A culture, not just the oral traditions. Folk process is used to describe the refinement and creative change of artifacts by community members within the folk tradition that defines the folk process. Professionals within this field, regardless of the other words they use, consider themselves to be folklorists. Other terms which might be confused with folklore are popular culture and vernacular culture . However, pop culture tends to be in demand for

1152-689: A degree, and due to poor health he was forced to abandon the pursuit of the legal profession and admission to the Irish Bar . In 1824 he settled in London, and engaged in literary and journalistic work. Keightley is known to have contributed tales to Thomas Crofton Croker 's Fairy Legends of South Ireland (1825), though not properly acknowledged. It turned out that he submitted at least one tale ("The Soul Cages") almost entirely of his own fabrication unbeknown to Croker and others. Having spent time in Italy, he

1296-503: A different direction. Throughout the 19th century folklore had been tied to romantic ideals of the soul of the people, in which folk tales and folksongs recounted the lives and exploits of ethnic folk heroes. Folklore chronicled the mythical origins of different peoples across Europe and established the beginnings of national pride . By the first decade of the 20th century there were scholarly societies as well as individual folklore positions within universities, academies, and museums. However,

1440-552: A difficult and painful discussion within the German folklore community. Following World War II, the discussion continued about whether to align folklore studies with literature or ethnology. Within this discussion, many voices were actively trying to identify the optimal approach to take in the analysis of folklore artifacts. One major change had already been initiated by Franz Boas. Culture was no longer viewed in evolutionary terms; each culture has its own integrity and completeness, and

1584-399: A gorgeous woman from waist up, and fish-like waist down, her lower extremity "covered with greenish-tinted scales" (according to O'Hanlon). She has green hair which she fondly grooms with her comb. She exhibits slight webbing between her fingers, a white and delicate film resembling "the skin between egg and shell". Said to be of "modest, affectionate, gentle, and [benevolent] disposition",

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1728-437: A life cycle of linear time (ex. baptisms, weddings, funerals). This needs to be expanded to other traditions of oral lore. For folk narrative is NOT a linear chain of isolated tellings, going from one single performance on our time-space grid to the next single performance. Instead it fits better into a non-linear system, where one performer varies the story from one telling to the next, and the performer's understudy starts to tell

1872-426: A limited time, mass-produced and communicated using mass media. Individually, these tend to be labeled fads , and disappear as quickly as they appear. The term vernacular culture differs from folklore in its overriding emphasis on a specific locality or region. For example, vernacular architecture denotes the standard building form of a region, using the materials available and designed to address functional needs of

2016-420: A long list of history quizzes organized by chapter, for young students of his Roman, Greek, and histories. Keightley stated he sought to create history material for the schoolroom which were an improvement on Oliver Goldsmith 's History , thought himself equal to the task, and found his proof when his titles were "adopt(ed).. immediately on their appearance" by " Eton , Harrow , Rugby, Winchester , and most of

2160-469: A major reason for the country's economic and political weakness, and he promised to restore a German realm based on a cleansed, and hence strong, German people. Racial or ethnic purity" was the goal of the Nazis, intent on forging a Greater Germanic Reich . In the postwar years, departments of folklore were established in multiple German universities. However an analysis of just how folklore studies supported

2304-460: A merrow may leave her outer skin behind in order to transform into other beings "more magical and beauteous", But in Croker's book, this characteristic isn't ascribed to the merrow but to the merwife of Shetlandic and Faroese lore, said to shed their seal-skins to shapeshift between human form and a seal's guise (i.e., the selkie and its counterpart, the kópakona ). Another researcher noted that

2448-521: A modern academic discipline, folklore studies straddles the space between the social sciences and the humanities . The study of folklore originated in Europe in the first half of the 19th century with a focus on the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm , first published 1812, is the best known collection of the verbal folklore of

2592-521: A more historico-scientific, as opposed to theological approach to Greek mythology . Keightley's Tales and Popular Fictions; their Resemblances and Transmissions from Country to Country, appeared in 1834. He divided the book into three parts, tales which he believed were transmitted to Europe from the Middle East, tale groups demonstrating striking similarity but which he thought were independently conceived, and those which confounded him. Keightley

2736-473: A musical ever-tuneful song to the crews of the ships that sail near them, so that they fall into the stupor of sleep in listening to them; they afterwards drag the crews of the ships towards them when they find them thus asleep, and so devour them... There are tales featuring Irish mermaids in the Dindsenchas , collections of onomastic tales explaining the origins of place names. One tale explains how

2880-503: A negative feedback loop at the next iteration. Both performer and audience are acting within the "Twin Laws" of folklore transmission , in which novelty and innovation is balanced by the conservative forces of the familiar. Even further, the presence of a folklore observer at a performance of any kind will influence the performance itself in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Because folklore is firstly an act of communication between parties, it

3024-535: A new action. The field has expanded from a focus on mechanistic and biological systems to an expanded recognition that these theoretical constructs can also be applied to many cultural and societal systems, including folklore. Once divorced from a model of tradition that works solely on a linear time scale (i.e. moving from one folklore performance to the next), we begin to ask different questions about how these folklore artifacts maintain themselves over generations and centuries. The oral tradition of jokes as an example

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3168-448: A race of titans . Though that may be so according to the genealogy laid out by Hesiod 's Theogony , it has been pointed out that Milton could well have used alternate sources, such as Lactantius 's Divinae Institutiones ("Divine Institutes"), which quotes Ennius to the effect that Uranus had two sons, Titan and Saturn . Likewise regarding Milton's angelology , Keightley had made some correct observations, but he had constrained

3312-505: A series of mid-sized histories to be used in schools. History of England (1837–39), 2 vols., although based on John Lingard , was intended to counteract that writer's Catholic tendencies. Other textbooks followed: History of Greece (1835); Rome (1836); Roman Empire (1840); India in (1846–7). His History of Greece was translated into modern Greek. Keightley also compiled as a study tool Questions on Keightley's History of Greece and Rome (1836), and one on English history (1840) consisted of

3456-447: A social group and to collect their lore, preferably in situ. Once collected, these data need to be documented and preserved to enable further access and study. The documented lore is then available to be analyzed and interpreted by folklorists and other cultural historians, and can become the basis for studies of either individual customs or comparative studies. There are multiple venues, be they museums, journals or folk festivals to present

3600-460: A study of homoerotic subtext in American football and anal-erotic elements in German folklore, were not always appreciated and involved Dundes in several major folklore studies controversies during his career. True to each of these approaches, and any others one might want to employ (political, women's issues, material culture, urban contexts, non-verbal text, ad infinitum), whichever perspective

3744-678: A systematic and pioneering way since the late 19th century. In the work of compiling the popular traditions of the Chilean people and of the original peoples, they stood out, not only in the study of national folklore, but also in Latin America. Ramón Laval, Julio Vicuña, Rodolfo Lenz, José Toribio Medina, Tomás Guevara, Félix de Augusta, and Aukanaw, among others, generated an important documentary and critical corpus around oral literature , autochthonous languages, regional dialects, and peasant and indigenous customs. They published, mainly during

3888-466: A trove of cultures rubbing elbows with each other, mixing and matching into exciting combinations as new generations come up. It is in the study of their folklife that we begin to understand the cultural patterns underlying the different ethnic groups. Language and customs provide a window into their view of reality. "The study of varying worldviews among ethnic and national groups in America remains one of

4032-399: A wide-variety of sometimes synonymous terms. Folklore was the original term used in this discipline. Its synonym, folklife , came into circulation in the second half of the 20th century, at a time when some researchers felt that the term folklore was too closely tied exclusively to oral lore. The new term folklife , along with its synonym folk culture , is meant to include all aspects of

4176-594: Is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk expands the material considered to be folklore artifacts to include "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". The folklorist studies

4320-900: Is also synonymous with mermaid. The corresponding term in the Scots dialect is morrough , derived from the Irish, with no original Scottish Gaelic form suggested. The Middle Irish murdúchann , (from muir + dúchann "chant, song" ) with its singing melodies that held sway over seamen was more characteristic of the sirens of classical mythology , and was imported into Irish literature via Homer's Odyssey . The terms muirgeilt , samguba , and suire been listed as synonymous to "mermaid" or "sea nymph". These are Old or Middle Irish words, and usage are attested in medieval tracts. Other modern Irish terms for mermaid are given in O'Reilly's dictionary (1864); one of them, maighdean mhara ("sea-maiden"), being

4464-465: Is best known for his collection of epic Finnish poems published under the title Kalevala . John Fanning Watson in the United States published the "Annals of Philadelphia". With increasing industrialization, urbanization, and the rise in literacy throughout Europe in the 19th century, folklorists were concerned that the oral knowledge and beliefs, the lore of the rural folk would be lost. It

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4608-527: Is chosen will spotlight some features and leave other characteristics in the shadows. With the passage in 1976 of the American Folklife Preservation Act, folklore studies in the United States came of age. This legislation follows in the footsteps of other legislation designed to safeguard more tangible aspects of our national heritage worthy of protection. This law also marks a shift in our national awareness; it gives voice to

4752-420: Is found across all cultures, and is documented as early as 1600 B.C. Whereas the subject matter varies widely to reflect its cultural context, the form of the joke remains remarkably consistent. According to the theories of cybernetics and its secondary field of autopoiesis , this can be attributed to a closed loop auto-correction built into the system maintenance of oral folklore. Auto-correction in oral folklore

4896-451: Is incomplete without inclusion of the reception in its analysis. The understanding of folklore performance as communication leads directly into modern linguistic theory and communication studies . Words both reflect and shape our worldview. Oral traditions, particularly in their stability over generations and even centuries, provide significant insight into the ways in which insiders of a culture see, understand, and express their responses to

5040-607: Is just a partial list of the fields of study related to folklore studies, all of which are united by a common interest in subject matter. It is well-documented that the term folklore was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms . He fabricated it for use in an article published in the August 22, 1846 issue of The Athenaeum . Thoms consciously replaced the contemporary terminology of popular antiquities or popular literature with this new word. Folklore

5184-520: Is regarded as an early practitioner in England of the Brothers Grimm 's approach to the study of myth and folklore, exploring the parallels between the myth of a nation to the religions and mythology of other regions. Thus Keightley began by attempting to trace fairy myth to Gothic and Teutonic roots, as the Grimms had done for elves . Keightley, like the Grimms, eventually reached the conclusion that it

5328-412: Is said to have praised the work. It was popular among Victorian folklore researchers and literary figures in its day; an expanded edition appeared in 1850, and a newly prefaced one in 1860. It has subsequently been reissued intermittently up to modern times, vindicating Keightley's own "high hopes of immortality for his work" in his preface, despite an early biographer calling this "pretentious". Keightley

5472-631: Is the Jewish Christmas Tree , a point of some contention among American Jews. Public sector folklore was introduced into the American Folklore Society in the early 1970s. These public folklorists work in museums and cultural agencies to identify and document the diverse folk cultures and folk artists in their region. Beyond this, they provide performance venues for the artists, with the twin objectives of entertainment and education about different ethnic groups. Given

5616-470: The Physiologus , or rather the medieval European bestiaries , particularly that of Bartholomaeus Anglicus . There are several onomastic tales which attempts to explain the name origin of Ess Ruaid (Assaroe Falls), one of which involves mermaid music ( samguba ). It purports a woman named Ruad who rowed out to the estuary was lulled to sleep by the "mermaid's melody" and drowned in

5760-802: The Book of Invasions , which recounts siren-like murdúchann encountered by legendary ancestors of the Irish people while migrating across the Caspian Sea . O'Hanlon 's disclosure of "an old tract , contained in the Book of Lecain [ sic ]" about the king of the Fomorians encountering them in the Ictian Sea is a tale in the Dindsenchas . The Annals of the Four Masters (17th cent.), an amalgamation of earlier annals, has an entry for

5904-456: The Book of Invasions interpolated a decidedly half-fish half-female depiction of the murdúchand in his copy of the Lebor Gabála : In this wise are those seamonsters, with the form of a woman from their navels upwards, excelling every female form in beauty and shapeliness, with light yellow hair down over their shoulders; but fishes are they from their navels downwards. They sing

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6048-616: The Historical-Geographical method , also called the Finnish method. Using multiple variants of a tale, this investigative method attempted to work backwards in time and location to compile the original version from what they considered the incomplete fragments still in existence. This was the search for the "Urform", which by definition was more complete and more "authentic" than the newer, more scattered versions. The historic-geographic method has been succinctly described as

6192-667: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife festivals around the country. Folklore interest sparked in Turkey around the second half of the nineteenth century when the need to determine a national language came about. Their writings consisted of vocabulary and grammatical rule from the Arabic and Persian language. Although the Ottoman intellectuals were not affected by the communication gap, in 1839,

6336-554: The Tanzimat reform introduced a change to Ottoman literature. A new generation of writers with contact to the West, especially France, noticed the importance of literature and its role in the development of institutions. Following the models set by Westerners, the new generation of writers returned to Turkey bringing the ideologies of novels, short stories, plays and journalism with them. These new forms of literature were set to enlighten

6480-725: The number of folk festivals held around the world, it becomes clear that the cultural multiplicity of a region is presented with pride and excitement. Public folklorists are increasingly being involved in economic and community development projects to elucidate and clarify differing world views of the social groups impacted by the projects. Once folklore artifacts have been recorded on the World Wide Web, they can be collected in large electronic databases and even moved into collections of big data . This compels folklorists to find new ways to collect and curate these data. Along with these new challenges, electronic data collections provide

6624-423: The traditional artifacts of a group and the groups within which these customs, traditions and beliefs are transmitted. Transmission of folk artifacts is necessary to their preservation over time outside of study by cultural archaeologist. Beliefs and customs are passed informally within a folk group mainly anonymously and in multiple variants. This is in contrast to high culture , characterized by recognition by

6768-482: The "feather garment" motif in swan maiden -type tales. The cohuleen druith was also considered to be of red color by Yeats, although this is not indicated by his predecessors such as Croker. An analogue to the "mermaid's cap" is found in an Irish tale of a supernatural wife who emerged from the freshwater Lough Owel in Westmeath , Ireland. She was found to be wearing a salmon-skin cap that glittered in

6912-457: The "sea lunatic" Muirgheilt , which is Lí Ban 's nickname) is recorded in the Annals of Ulster for the year 571. The medieval Lebor Gabála Érenn ("The Book of Invasions") relates how a band of Goidels on a migratory voyage were stalled on the Caspian Sea by murdúchand (translated as "sirens" by Macalister) who lulled them to sleep with their songs. Wax ear-plugs for

7056-578: The 19th century. The 1878 edition was reprinted a century later retitled as The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People (New York: Avenel Books, 1978). Keightley's bowdlerized The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy for the Use of School (1831) was applauded by Thirlwall for making the subject "fit for ladies." In it, Cronus 's use of the adamant sickle ( harpē ) to emasculate his father has been euphemized as an act of Uranus being "mutilated". It has been noted that Keightley took

7200-418: The 19th century: " Lady of Gollerus ", where a green-haired merrow weds a local Kerry man who deprives her of the "magical red cap" ( cohuleen druith ); and " The Soul Cages " where a green-bodied grotesque male merrow entertains a fisherman at his home under the sea. These tales with commentary were first published in T. C. Croker 's Fairy Legends (1828). William Butler Yeats and others writing on

7344-650: The 20th century that Folklore Studies in Europe and America began to diverge. The Europeans continued with their emphasis on oral traditions of the pre-literate peasant, and remained connected to literary scholarship within the universities. By this definition, folklore was completely based in the European cultural sphere; any social group that did not originate in Europe was to be studied by ethnologists and cultural anthropologists . In this light, some twenty-first century scholars have interpreted European folkloristics as an instrument of internal colonialism , in parallel with

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7488-901: The English language, including the expanded prose versions of Ogier the Dane which conveys the hero to Morgan le Fay 's Fairyland , or Swedish ballads on nixes and elves , such as Harpans kraft ("Power of the Harp") and Herr Olof och älvorna  [ sv ] ("Sir Olof in Elve-Dance"). Keithley was one of "early and important comparativist collectors" of folklore, and "For an early book of folklore The Fairy Mythology sets high standards". In 1828 Keightley published Fairy Mythology, 2 vols., illustrated by W. H. Brooke . A German translation by Wolff  [ de ] Mythologie der feen und elfen (1828) quickly appeared. Jacob Grimm

7632-499: The European peasantry. This interest in stories, sayings and songs, i.e. verbal lore , continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folklore studies with literature and mythology . By the turn into the 20th century, European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogeneous peasant populations in their regions, while the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

7776-559: The Irish (either Goidels or Milesians ) according to the Book of Invasions . This, as well as samguba and suire are terms for the mermaid that appear in onomastic tales of the Dindsenchas . A muirgheilt , literally "sea-wanderer", is the term for the mermaid Lí Ban . Current scholarship regards merrow as a Hiberno-English term, derived from Irish murúch (Middle Irish murdhúchu or murdúchann ) meaning "sea singer" or "siren". But this

7920-485: The Irish and Scottish coasts. It did not escape the notice of 19th century folklorists that attestations of murdúchann occur in Irish medieval and post-medieval literature, although they have been somewhat imprecise in specifying their textual sources. Croker 's remark that "the romantic historians of Ireland" depicted suire (synonym of merrow) playing round the ships of the Milesians actually leads to

8064-544: The Irish merrow's device was her cap "covering her entire body", as opposed to the Scottish Maid-of-the-Wave who had her salmon-skin. Yeats claimed that merrows come ashore transformed into "little hornless cows". One stymied investigator conjectured this claim to be an extrapolation on Kennedy's statement that sea-cows are attracted to pasture on the meadowland wherever the merrow resided. Merrow-maidens have also been known to lure young men beneath

8208-609: The Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, with an Introduction to Paradise Lost (1855). His nuggets of insight have been occasionally invoked, compared, and contradicted in studies into the 20th century and beyond. He is listed among the "distinguished file" in one survey of past commentaries on Milton, going back three centuries ( Miner, Moeck & Jablonski (2004) ). Appreciation of allusions in Milton's poems require familiarity with classical Greco-Roman mythology and epics; to borrow

8352-532: The Maid-of-the-wave. It was called in Scottish Gaelic cochull , glossed as 'slough' and "meaning apparently a scaly tail which comes off to reveal human legs", though it should be mentioned that a cochull in the first instance denotes a piece of garment over the head, a hood-cape. The "fishtail-skin" mermaid folklore (as well as that of "seal-skin" seal-woman/ selkie ) are found all over

8496-735: The Middle Ages ( Library of Entertaining Knowledge 1837) was initially published anonymously, and against his wish, and later reprinted in 1848. Keightley edited Virgil 's Bucolics and Georgics (1847), which was prefigured by his Notes on the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil with Excursus, terms of Husbandry, and a Flora Virgiliana, (1846). Other Latin classics he edited were Horace , Satires and Epistles (1848), Ovid, Fasti (1848), and Sallust , Catilina and Jugurtha (1849). Keightley produced an annotated edition of Milton (2 vols. 1859) as well as his critical biography Account of

8640-532: The Nazi Party. Their expressed goal was to re-establish what they perceived as the former purity of the Germanic peoples of Europe. The German anti-Nazi philosopher Ernst Bloch was one of the main analysts and critics of this ideology. "Nazi ideology presented racial purity as the means to heal the wounds of the suffering German state following World War I. Hitler painted the ethnic heterogeneity of Germany as

8784-473: The Old French romance, Adenes Le Roi 's Cléomadès . He also wrote of Henry Fielding 's peculiarism of using the antiquated "hath" and "doth" ( Fraser's Magazine , 1858), without acknowledging a commentator who made the same observation before him. Keightley, a friend to Gabriele Rossetti , and firm supporter of the latter's views on Dante became one of a handful of non-Italians who socialized with

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8928-458: The Rossetti family provide some other loose information on Keightley's related kin or on his later private life. A record by William Rossetti of a spiritual séance at Keightley's home at Belvedere on 4 January 1866, amusing in its own right, identifies "two Misses Keightley" in attendance, a kinsman named "William Samuel Keightley" who died in 1856 supposed to have made his spiritual presence in

9072-538: The advent of the digital age , the question once again foregrounds itself concerning the relevance of folklore in this new century. Although the profession in folklore grows and the articles and books on folklore topics proliferate, the traditional role of the folklorist is indeed changing. The United States is known as a land of immigrants; with the exception of the first Indian nations , everyone originally came from somewhere else. Americans are proud of their cultural diversity . For folklorists, this country represents

9216-455: The amateur at the turn of the 20th century was to collect and classify cultural artifacts from the pre-industrial rural areas, parallel to the drive in the life sciences to do the same for the natural world. "Folk was a clear label to set materials apart from modern life…material specimens, which were meant to be classified in the natural history of civilization. Tales, originally dynamic and fluid, were given stability and concreteness by means of

9360-601: The auspices of the Federal Writers Project during these years continues to offer a goldmine of primary source materials for folklorists and other cultural historians. As chairman of the Federal Writers' Project between 1938 and 1942, Benjamin A. Botkin supervised the work of these folklore field workers. Both Botkin and John Lomax were particularly influential during this time in expanding folklore collection techniques to include more detailing of

9504-740: The beliefs and customs of diverse cultural groups in their region. These positions are often affiliated with museums, libraries, arts organizations, public schools, historical societies, etc. The most renowned of these is the American Folklife Center at the Smithsonian, which hosts the Smithsonian Folklife Festival every summer in Washington, DC. Public folklore differentiates itself from the academic folklore supported by universities, in which collection, research and analysis are primary goals. The field of folklore studies uses

9648-486: The best history of Rome in any language, or to be the first to justly value Virgil and Sallust, could not be admitted by his friends. During the last years of his life he received a pension from the civil list. He died at Erith, Kent, on Nov 4, 1872. Besides the works already mentioned Keightley was author of The Crusaders, or Scenes, Events, and Characters from the times of the Crusaders (1834). His Secret Societies of

9792-428: The common term for "mermaid" in Irish today (cf. de Bhaldraithe 's dictionary, 1959). The term muirgeilt , literally "sea-wanderer", has been applied, among other uses, to Lí Ban , a legendary figure who underwent metamorphosis into a salmon-woman. Strictly speaking, the term samguba in the Dindsenchas example signifies "mermaid's melody". However, O'Clery 's Glossary explains that this

9936-505: The constant rhythms of the natural world. Within the last decades our time scale has expanded from unimaginably small ( nanoseconds ) to unimaginably large ( deep time ). In comparison, our working concept of time as {past : present : future} looks almost quaint. How do we map "tradition" into this multiplicity of time scales? Folklore studies has already acknowledged this in the study of traditions which are either done in an annual cycle of circular time (ex. Christmas, May Day), or in

10080-491: The customs and beliefs of the group. Or it can be performance for an outside group, in which the first goal is to set the performers apart from the audience. This analysis then goes beyond the artifact itself, be it dance, music or story-telling. It goes beyond the performers and their message. As part of performance studies, the audience becomes part of the performance. If any folklore performance strays too far from audience expectations, it will likely be brought back by means of

10224-526: The demise of Roth son of Cithang by mermaids ( murduchann ) in the Ictian sea ( English Channel ) gave birth to the name Port Láirge (now County Waterford ). "Port of the Thigh" it came to be called where his thigh washed ashore. The mermaids here are described as beautiful maidens except for their hill-sized "hairy-clawed bestial lower part" below water. While one text group only goes as far as to say

10368-667: The digital age, the binary thinking of the 20th century structuralists remains an important tool in the folklorist's toolbox. This does not mean that binary thinking was invented in recent times along with computers; only that we became aware of both the power and the limitations of the "either/or" construction. In folklore studies, the multiple binaries underlying much of the theoretical thinking have been identified – {dynamicism : conservatism}, {anecdote : myth}, {process : structure}, {performance : tradition}, {improvisation : repetition}, {variation : traditionalism}, {repetition : innovation}; not to overlook

10512-414: The discipline is that this term places undue emphasis on the origination of the artifact as a sign of authenticity of the tradition. Adjacently, the adjective folkloric is used to designate materials having the character of folklore or tradition, at the same time making no claim to authenticity. There are several goals of active folklore research. The first objective is to identify tradition bearers within

10656-757: The document. UNESCO further published the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. The American Folklife Preservation Act (P.L. 94-201) passed in 1976 by the United States Congress in conjunction with the Bicentennial Celebration included a definition of folklore, also called folklife : "...[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within

10800-431: The elites of a given society and identified as specific works created by individuals. The folklorist study the significance of these beliefs, customs and objects for the group. In folklore studies "folklore means something – to the tale teller, to the song singer, to the fiddler, and to the audience or addressees". The field assumes cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within

10944-428: The emerging middle class. For literate, urban intellectuals and students of folklore the folk was someone else and the past was recognized as being something truly different. Folklore became a measure of the progress of society , how far we had moved forward into the industrial present and indeed removed ourselves from a past marked by poverty, illiteracy and superstition. The task of both the professional folklorist and

11088-445: The entire male populace of its kind, the red nose possibly attributable to their love of brandy . The merrow which signifies "sea maiden" is an awkward term when applied to the male, but has been in use for a lack of a term in Irish dialect for merman . One scholar has insisted the term macamore might be used as the Irish designation for merman, since it means literally "son of the sea", on authority of Patrick Kennedy, though

11232-415: The event of doing something within a given context, for a specific audience, using artifacts as necessary props in the communication of traditions between individuals and within groups. Beginning in the 1970s, these new areas of folklore studies became articulated in performance studies , where traditional behaviors are evaluated and understood within the context of their performance. It is the meaning within

11376-418: The family in the childhood days of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his siblings. Keightley's Fairy Mythology was one of the books Dante Gabriel pored over until age ten. William Michael Rossetti 's Memoir notes that Keightley had as "his nephew and adopted son, Mr. Alfred Chaworth Lyster" who became a dear friend. A pen and ink likeness of this nephew by Dante Gabriel Rossetti exists, dated 1855. Writings from

11520-469: The field of folklore studies even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field. Public folklore is a relatively new offshoot of folklore studies, starting after the Second World War and modeled on the work of Alan Lomax and Ben Botkin in the 1930s. Lomax and Botkin emphasized applied folklore , with modern public sector folklorists working to document, preserve and present

11664-532: The first decades of the 20th century, linguistic and philological studies, dictionaries, comparative studies between the national folklores of Ibero-America, compilations of stories, poetry, and religious traditions. In 1909, at the initiative of Laval, Vicuña and Lenz, the Chilean Folklore Society was founded, the first of its kind in America. Two years later, it would merge with the recently created Chilean Society of History and Geography. With

11808-498: The fore following World War II; as spokesman, William Bascom formulated the 4 functions of folklore . This approach takes a more top-down approach to understand how a specific form fits into and expresses meaning within the culture as a whole. A third method of folklore analysis, popular in the late 20th century, is the Psychoanalytic Interpretation, championed by Alan Dundes . His monographs, including

11952-461: The group, though their meaning can shift and morph with time. Folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group. Folklore does not need to be old; it continues through the modern day. It is created, transmitted, and used to establish "us" and "them" within a given group. The unique nature of a culture's folklore requires the development of methods of study by the culture at hand for effective identification and research. As

12096-457: The imperialistic dimensions of early 20th century cultural anthropology and Orientalism . Unlike contemporary anthropology, however, many early European folklorists were themselves members of the prioritized groups that folkloristics was intended to study; for instance, Andrew Lang and James George Frazer were both themselves Scotsmen and studied rural folktales from towns near where they grew up. In contrast to this, American folklorists, under

12240-525: The influence of the German-American Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , sought to incorporate other cultural groups living in their region into the study of folklore. This included not only customs brought over by northern European immigrants, but also African Americans, Acadians of eastern Canada, Cajuns of Louisiana, Hispanics of the American southwest, and Native Americans . Not only were these distinct cultural groups all living in

12384-534: The interview context. This was a significant move away from viewing the collected artifacts as isolated fragments, broken remnants of an incomplete pre-historic whole. Using these new interviewing techniques, the collected lore became embedded in and imbued with meaning within the framework of its contemporary practice. The emphasis moved from the lore to the folk, i.e. the groups and the people who gave this lore meaning within contemporary daily living. In Europe during these same decades, folklore studies were drifting in

12528-464: The latter merely glosses macamore as designating local inhabitants of the County Wexford coast. Gaelic (Irish) words for mermen are murúch fir "mermaid-man" or fear mara "man of the sea". Merrows wear a special hat called a cohuleen druith , which enables them to dive beneath the waves. If they lose this cap, it is said that they will lose their power to return beneath

12672-417: The local economy. Folk architecture is a subset of this, in which the construction is not done by a professional architect or builder, but by an individual putting up a needed structure in the local style. Therefore, all folklore is vernacular culture, but not all vernacular culture necessarily folklore. In addition to these terms, folklorism refers to "material or stylistic elements of folklore [presented] in

12816-522: The masses. He later produced a collection of four thousand proverbs. Many other poets and writers throughout the Turkish nation began to join in on the movement including Ahmet Midhat Efendi who composed short stories based on the proverbs written by Sinasi. These short stories, like many folk stories today, were intended to teach moral lessons to its readers. The study of folklore in Chile was developed in

12960-405: The mermaids dismembered Roth, alternate texts says that they devoured him, so that only the thigh bone drifted ashore. Thus, like the mermaids in O'Clery's version, the half-beautiful mermaids here sang sleep-inducing " burdens " or musical refrains, tore their victims apart, and ate them. Whitley Stokes noted that the description of mermaids here coincides with the description of sirens in

13104-652: The merrow is believed "capable of attachment to human beings", with reports of inter-marriage. One such mixed marriage took place in Bantry , producing descendants marked by "scaly skin" and "membrane between fingers and toes". But after some "years in succession" they will almost inevitably return to the sea, their "natural instincts" irresistibly overcoming any love-bond they may have formed with their terrestrial family. And to prevent her acting on impulse, her cohuleen druith (or "little magic cap") must be kept "well concealed from his sea-wife". O'Hanlon mentioned that

13248-409: The merrow's hat shared something in common with "feather dresses of the ladies" in two Arabian Nights tales. However, he did not mean the merrow's hat had feathers on them. As other commentators have point out, what Croker meant was that both contained the motif of a supernatural woman who is bereft of the article of clothing and is prevented from escaping her captor. This is commonly recognized as

13392-423: The merrow. It was immediately translated into German by the Brothers Grimm . Croker's material on the merrow was to a large measure rehashed by such authors on the fairy-kind as Thomas Keightley , John O'Hanlon , and the poet William Butler Yeats . A general sketch of the merrow pieced together by such 19th century authors are as follows. The merrow-maiden is like the commonly stereotypical mermaid: half-human,

13536-464: The moonlight. A local farmer captured her and took her to be his bride, bearing him children, but she disappeared after discovering her cap while rummaging in the household. Although this "fairy mistress" is not from the sea, one Celticist identifies her as a muir-óigh (sea-maiden) nevertheless. The Scottish counterpart to the merrow's cap was a "removable" skin, "like the skin of a salmon, but brighter and more beautiful, and very large", worn by

13680-499: The most extensive literary use of American folklore of its time. By the beginning of the 20th century these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published a first classification system for folktales in 1910. It was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains

13824-492: The most important unfinished tasks for folklorists and anthropologists." Contrary to a widespread concern, we are not seeing a loss of diversity and increasing cultural homogenization across the land. In fact, critics of this theory point out that as different cultures mix, the cultural landscape becomes multifaceted with the intermingling of customs. People become aware of other cultures and pick and choose different items to adopt from each other. One noteworthy example of this

13968-427: The music, whether ashore on the strand or upon the wave. While most stories about merrow are about female creatures, a tale about an Irish merman does exist in the form of " The Soul Cages ", published in Croker's anthology. In it, a merman captured the souls of drowned sailors and locked them in cages ( lobster pot -like objects) under the sea. This tale turned out to be an invented piece of fiction (an adaptation of

14112-417: The national understanding that diversity within the country is a unifying feature, not something that separates us. "We no longer view cultural difference as a problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at

14256-482: The need to collect these vestiges of rural traditions became more compelling, the need to formalize this new field of cultural studies became apparent. The British Folklore Society was established in 1878 and the American Folklore Society was established a decade later. These were just two of a plethora of academic societies founded in the latter half of the 19th century by educated members of

14400-483: The ones upon which the sirens wreaked havoc, while in the Second and Third Redactions, their progeny the Milesians led by Míl Espáine met the same fate. These murdúchand resemble sirens defeated by Odysseus to such a degree, " Homeric influence" is plainly evident. The medieval scribes of Lebor Gabála eschewed physical descriptions. However, Michael O'Clery 's 17th century recension of

14544-538: The opportunity to ask different questions, and combine with other academic fields to explore new aspects of traditional culture. Computational humor is just one new field that has taken up the traditional oral forms of jokes and anecdotes for study, holding its first dedicated conference in 1996. This takes us beyond gathering and categorizing large joke collections. Scholars are using computers firstly to recognize jokes in context, and further to attempt to create jokes using artificial intelligence . As we move forward in

14688-466: The original binary of the first folklorists: {traditional : modern} or {old : new}. Bauman re-iterates this thought pattern in claiming that at the core of all folklore is the dynamic tension between tradition and variation (or creativity). Noyes uses similar vocabulary to define [folk] group as "the ongoing play and tension between, on the one hand, the fluid networks of relationship we constantly both produce and negotiate in everyday life and, on

14832-573: The other great public schools , besides a number of private ones." In 1850, Keightley wrote immodestly of his historical output as "yet unrivalled, and may long be unsurpassed." Keightley's History of Rome was derivative of the labors of the German classical historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr , and Keightley's patron or mentor Arnold was a subscriber of Niebuhr's approach. Samuel Warren , in his Legal Studies, 3rd ed. 1854 (i. 235–6, 349), highly praises his historical work. But he ludicrously overestimated all his performances, and his claim to have written

14976-569: The other, the imagined communities we also create and enact but that serve as forces of stabilizing allegiance." This thinking only becomes problematic in light of the theoretical work done on binary opposition , which exposes the values intrinsic to any binary pair. Typically, one of the two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. The categorization of binary oppositions is "often value-laden and ethnocentric", imbuing them with illusory order and superficial meaning. Another baseline of western thought has also been thrown into disarray in

15120-493: The people of Turkey, influencing political and social change within the country. However, the lack of understanding for the language of their writings limited their success in enacting change. Using the language of the "common people" to create literature, influenced the Tanzimat writers to gain interest in folklore and folk literature. In 1859, writer Sinasi , wrote a play in simple enough language that it could be understood by

15264-712: The policies of the Third Reich did not begin until 20 years after World War II in West Germany. Particularly in the works of Hermann Bausinger and Wolfgang Emmerich in the 1960s, it was pointed out that the vocabulary current in Volkskunde was ideally suited for the kind of ideology that the National Socialists had built up. It was then another 20 years before convening the 1986 Munich conference on folklore and National Socialism. This continues to be

15408-545: The possibility that similar tales arose independently. At the request of the educator Thomas Arnold , he authored a series of textbooks on English, Greek, and other histories, which were adopted at Arnold's Rugby School as well as other public schools . Keightley, born in October 1789, was the son of Thomas Keightley of Newtown, County Kildare , and claimed to be related to Thomas Keightley (1650?–1719). He entered Trinity College, Dublin , on 4 July 1803, but left without

15552-484: The printed page." Viewed as fragments from a pre-literate culture, these stories and objects were collected without context to be displayed and studied in museums and anthologies, just as bones and potsherds were gathered for the life sciences. Kaarle Krohn and Antti Aarne were active collectors of folk poetry in Finland. The Scotsman Andrew Lang is known for his 25 volumes of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books from around

15696-544: The recent past. In western culture, we live in a time of progress , moving forward from one moment to the next. The goal is to become better and better, culminating in perfection. In this model time is linear, with direct causality in the progression. "You reap what you sow", "A stitch in time saves nine", "Alpha and omega", the Christian concept of an afterlife all exemplify a cultural understanding of time as linear and progressive. In folklore studies, going backwards in time

15840-406: The research results. The final step in this methodology involves advocating for these groups in their distinctiveness. The specific tools needed by folklorists to do their research are manifold. The folklorist also rubs shoulders with researchers, tools and inquiries of neighboring fields: literature, anthropology, cultural history, linguistics, geography, musicology, sociology, psychology. This

15984-484: The same regions, but their proximity to each other caused their traditions and customs to intermingle. The lore of these distinct social groups, all of them Americans, was considered the bailiwick of American folklorists, and aligned American folklore studies more with ethnology than with literary studies. Then came the 1930s and the worldwide Great Depression . In the United States the Federal Writers' Project

16128-439: The session. It has also been remarked that by this period, Keightley had become as "stone-deaf" as Seymour Kirkup , a person who was corresponding with Keightley on matters of spiritualism and visions. Folklore studies A 1982 UNESCO document titled "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore" declared a global need to establish provisions protecting folklore from varying dangers identified in

16272-661: The shipmates prescribed by Caicher the Druid proved to be an effective prophylactic . Even though Caicher the Druid is present in either case, different sets of voyagers, generationally-shifted from each other are engaged in actions with the sirens, depending on the variant text groups. In the First Redaction of Lebor Gabála , the Goidels settled in Scythia embarking on an exodus, led by men such as Lámfhind were

16416-442: The social group that becomes the focus for these folklorists, foremost among them Richard Baumann and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett . Enclosing any performance is a framework which signals that the following is something outside of ordinary communication. For example, "So, have you heard the one…" automatically flags the following as a joke. A performance can take place either within a cultural group, re-iterating and re-enforcing

16560-489: The source mostly to the Bible, and made mistakes, such as to identify the angel Ithuriel as a coinage. Keightley also published an unannotated edition of Shakespeare (6 vols. 1864), followed by a study guide entitled Shakespeare Expositor: an aid to the perfect understanding of Shakespeare's plays (1867). Keightley is credited with first noticing that Chaucer's Squire's Tale is paralleled by, and hence may have drawn from,

16704-684: The spot, which received its name after her. The Dindsenchas of Inber n-Ailbine (estuary of Delvin River , County Dublin ) is counted as a mermaid tale, though no "mermaid" term specifically occurs. Nine women dwelling in the sea held immobilized the fleet of three ships led by Rúad son of Rígdonn , a grandson of the king of the Fir Muirig people. Rúad lay with the beautiful women, but he made an empty promise to carry on their tryst. The women arrived by boat to exact vengeance on Rúad, but frustrated, slew two of his sons instead, including

16848-419: The standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items which had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups and epochs. In an effort to understand and explain the similarities found in tales from different locations, the Finnish folklorists Julius and Kaarle Krohne developed

16992-407: The story, also varying each performance in response to multiple factors. Cybernetics was first developed in the 20th century; it investigates the functions and processes of systems. The goal in cybernetics is to identify and understand a system's closed signaling loop, in which an action by the system generates a change in the environment, which in turn triggers feedback to the system and initiates

17136-431: The study of German Volkskunde had yet to be defined as an academic discipline. In the 1920s this originally apolitical movement was coopted by nationalism in several European countries, including Germany, where it was absorbed into emerging Nazi ideology. The vocabulary of German Volkskunde such as Volk (folk), Rasse (race), Stamm (tribe), and Erbe (heritage) were frequently referenced by

17280-489: The subject borrowed heavily from this work. "The Soul Cages" turned out not to be a genuine folktale, but rather a piece of fiction fabricated by Thomas Keightley . A number of other terms in Irish are used to denote a mermaid or sea-nymph, some tracing back to mythological tracts from the medieval to the post-medieval period. The Middle Irish murdúchann is a siren -like creature encountered by legendary ancestors of

17424-571: The tale, while at the same time allowing for the incorporation of new elements. Merrow Merrow (from Irish murúch , Middle Irish murdúchann or murdúchu ) is a mermaid or merman in Irish folklore. The term is anglicised from the Irish word murúch. The merrows supposedly require a magical cap ( Irish : cochaillín draíochta ; anglicised: cohuleen druith ) in order to travel between deep water and dry land. The term appears in two tales set in Ireland published in

17568-408: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folklore studies with cultural anthropology and ethnology . American folklorists thus used the same data collection techniques as these fields in their own field research . This the diverse alliance of folklore studies with other academic fields offers a variety of theoretical vantage points and research tools to

17712-591: The various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." This law in conjunction with other legislation

17856-420: The water. The normalized spelling in Irish is cochaillín draíochta , literally "little magic hood" ( cochall "cowl, hood, hooded cloak" + -ín diminutive suffix + gen. of draíocht ). This rendering is echoed by Kennedy who glosses this object as "nice little magic cap". Arriving at a different reconstruction, Croker believed that it denoted a hat in the a particular shape of

18000-403: The waves, where afterwards the men live in an enchanted state. While female merrows were considered to be very beautiful, the mermen were thought to be very ugly. This fact potentially accounted for the merrow's desire to seek out men on the land. Merrow music is known to be heard coming from the farthest depths of the ocean, yet the sound travels floatingly across the surface. Merrows dance to

18144-463: The words of an American contemporary Thomas Bulfinch : "Milton abounds in .. allusions" to classical mythology, and especially "scattered profusely" throughout Milton's Paradise Lost . Keightley was one annotator who meticulously tracked Milton's mythological sources. Some of Keightley's flawed commentary have been pointed out. He argued that Milton erred when he spoke of "Titan, Heaven's first-born," there being no single divine being named Titan, only

18288-487: The world around them. Three major approaches to folklore interpretation were developed during the second half of the 20th century. Structuralism in folklore studies attempts to define the structures underlying oral and customary folklore. Once classified, it was easy for structural folklorists to lose sight of the overarching issue: what are the characteristics which keep a form constant and relevant over multiple generations? Functionalism in folklore studies also came to

18432-546: The world. Francis James Child was an American academic who collected English and Scottish popular ballads and their American variants, published as the Child Ballads . In the United States, Mark Twain was a charter member of the American Folklore Society. Both he and Washington Irving drew on folklore to write their stories. The 1825 novel Brother Jonathan by John Neal is recognized as

18576-402: The year 887 that reports that a mermaid was cast ashore on the coast of Scotland (Alba). She was 195 feet (59 m) in length and had hair 18 feet (5.5 m) long; her fingers were 7 feet (2.1 m) long as was her nose, while she was as white as a swan . The Four Masters also records an entry under year 558 for the capture of Lí Ban as a mermaid; the same event (the capture of

18720-582: The year are stressed as important." In a more specific example, the folklorist Barre Toelken describes the Navajo as living in circular times, which is echoed and re-enforced in their sense of space, the traditional circular or multi-sided hogan . Lacking the European mechanistic devices of marking time (clocks, watches, calendars), they depended on the cycles of nature: sunrise to sunset, winter to summer. Their stories and histories are not marked by decades and centuries, but remain close in, as they circle around

18864-639: Was also a valid avenue of exploration. The goal of the early folklorists of the historic-geographic school was to reconstruct from fragments of folk tales the Urtext of the original mythic (pre-Christian) world view. When and where was an artifact documented? Those were the important questions posed by early folklorists in their collections. Armed with these data points, a grid pattern of time-space coordinates for artifacts could be plotted. Awareness has grown that different cultures have different concepts of time (and space). In his study "The American Indian Mind in

19008-502: Was an uneasy situation, as Keightley was clearly peeved at Croker for not properly acknowledging Keightley's aid, even though in the preface to the 1850 edition, Keightley explains the circumstances more cordially, addresses Croker as "one of my earliest literary friends in London". A selection in Fairy Mythology was an Irish mermaid story entitled "The Soul Cages," which turned out to be a hoax of sorts. The male merrow story

19152-460: Was capable of producing translations of tales from Pentamerone or The Nights of Straparola in Fairy Mythology , and he struck up a friendship with the patriarch of the Rossetti household. Thomas claimed to be literate in twenty-odd languages and dialects in all, and published a number of translations and digests of medieval and foreign works and passages, often sparsely treated elsewhere in

19296-437: Was designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States in alignment with efforts to promote and protect the cultural diversity of the United States and recognize it as a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. The term folklore contains component parts folk and lore . The word folk originally applied to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. A contemporary definition of folk

19440-558: Was established as part of the WPA . Its goal was to offer paid employment to thousands of unemployed writers by engaging them in various cultural projects around the country. These white collar workers were sent out as field workers to collect the oral folklore of their regions, including stories, songs, idioms and dialects. The most famous of these collections is the Slave Narrative Collection . The folklore collected under

19584-525: Was first articulated by the folklorist Walter Anderson in his monograph on the King and the Abbot published 1923. To explain the stability of the narrative, Anderson posited a “double redundancy”, in which the performer has heard the story from multiple other performers, and has himself performed it multiple times. This provides a feedback loop between repetitions at both levels to retain the essential elements of

19728-506: Was first printed in Croker's anthology, but Keightley came out with a later edition of the Fairy Mythology he added a footnote to this tale, proclaiming he "must here make an honest confession," and informed the reader that except for the kernel of the story adapted from the German story of "The Peasant and the Waterman", this Irish tale was entirely his invention. The Fairy Mythology underwent several printings (1833, 1850, 1878, etc.) in

19872-443: Was implausible to trace a myth to an ultimate single source, and that parallel myths can be explained by the " Enlightenment idea that human nature [that] is uniform," and similar experiences and responses are shared across mankind. Keightley had contributed to T. Crofton Croker 's Fairy Legend (1825–1828), and Keightley being stimulated to write his own book was perhaps the most important consequence of Croker's publication. But it

20016-528: Was long occupied in compiling historical manuals for instructional use and popular enlightenment. His Outlines of History was one of the early volumes of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia (1829). His History of the War of Greek Independence (1830) forms volumes lx. and lxi. of Constable's Miscellany . After the Outlines, Keightley was urged by the educator Thomas Arnold of Rugby School to undertake work on

20160-550: Was not progressing either toward wholeness or toward fragmentation. Individual artifacts must have meaning within the culture and for individuals themselves in order to assume cultural relevance and assure continued transmission. Because the European folklore movement had been primarily oriented toward oral traditions, a new term, folklife , was introduced to represent the full range of traditional culture. This included music , dance , storytelling , crafts , costume , foodways and more. In this period, folklore came to refer to

20304-434: Was not the derivation given by 19th century writers. According to Croker , "merrow" was a transliteration of modern Irish moruadh or moruach , which resolved into muir "sea" + oigh "maid". This "Gaelic" word could also denote "sea monster", and Croker remarked that it was cognate with Cornish morhuch , a " sea hog ". Yeats added murrúghach as an alternative original, as that word

20448-478: Was posited that the stories, beliefs and customs were surviving fragments of a cultural mythology of the region, pre-dating Christianity and rooted in pagan peoples and beliefs. This thinking goes in lockstep with the rise of nationalism across Europe. Some British folklorists, rather than lamenting or attempting to preserve rural or pre-industrial cultures, saw their work as a means of furthering industrialization, scientific rationalism, and disenchantment . As

20592-535: Was rhetorically the "name of the nymphs that are in the sea". The term suire for "mermaid" also finds instance in the Dinsenchas . Croker also vaguely noted that suire has been used by "romantic historians" in reference to the "sea-nymphs" enountered by Milesian ships. Thomas Crofton Croker 's Second Volume to the Fairy Legends (1828) laid the groundwork for the folkloric treatment of

20736-950: Was to emphasize the study of a specific subset of the population: the rural, mostly illiterate peasantry. In his published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of older, mostly oral cultural traditions still flourishing among the rural populace. In Germany the Brothers Grimm had first published their " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " in 1812. They continued throughout their lives to collect German folk tales to include in their collection. In Scandinavia , intellectuals were also searching for their authentic Teutonic roots and had labeled their studies Folkeminde (Danish) or Folkermimne (Norwegian). Throughout Europe and America, other early collectors of folklore were at work. Thomas Crofton Croker published fairy tales from southern Ireland and, together with his wife, documented keening and other Irish funeral customs. Elias Lönnrot

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