The Good People: New Fairylore Essays

Rating:
Summary: Strongly Recommended
Review: Little serious work on the fairy faith has been done in recent times, but this collection of scholarly essays makes up for the lack. As is often the case in this fascinating area of folklore, a few of the essays make you marvel at the enduring and oddly consistent character of the accounts. It gives me a wee chill to read recordings of interviews with Scottish schoolchildren done in the 1970s, and realize that they repeat notions noted among Welshmen by Sir John Rhys fully three-quarters of a century before. An excellent, entertaining and scholarly book that should be in the collection of any folklorist interested in the fairy faith.

Rating:
Summary: Fairylore Lives!
Review: Most books on fairylore are collections first published in the nineteenth century or draw primarily from the author's imagination. Those wishing to know more must fall back on scholarly journals that may not be readily available to most readers. This book makes such studies available in an affordable form that you will reread many times. The studies in this book reflect beliefs and attitudes among people of the late twentieth century in communities of maritime Canada as well as Celtic countries. What is most illuminating is the consistency between recent attitudes and those collected earlier.