Read In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore

In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore

Ralph Whitlock

4.9/5 (19882 ratings)

Description:The sight of people performing actions that seem superficially strange prompts an inquiry into not only what they are doing but why. In the context of folklore the participants often do not know the answer. They are repeating a ritual inherited from generations of ancestors, and often the explanations they give are decidedly garbled. By probing deep, however, it is usually possible to discover some grain of logic behind what may seem to be absurd behviour or belief.Civilization tends to be a rather thin veneer concealing a mass of primitive instincts and atavistic memories. Christianity is one of a succession of religions in which men have sought for an explanation of the mysteries of life and death. Arriving comparatively late in historfy, it grafted its basic tenets on age-old beliefs and customs which were too powerful to eradicate.A student of folklore encounters a number of strata of religious beliefs and practices, associated with a succession of invaders (Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Celts), all overlying a basic animism. A constant figure in ancient mythology was the Earth Mother, still remembered in the Corn Goddess or Kern Baby, whose image in straw is fashioned to celebrate the climax of harvest. The celebration of Samhain, when the Otherworld becomes temporarily entangled with our own, survives in Hallowe'en, though Christianized as All Saint's Day and with its liveliest features, notably bonfires, dispersed over the calendar. The Horn Dance, still performed at Abbots Bromley, the West Country legends of fairies and pixies, the mumming plays and the Morris dancers, and dim recollections of initiation rites into secret orders, as at the Weyhill Horn Supper, take us back to primeval days.In this book, the distinguished author of a number of volumes on folklore, surveying the field, attempts to inspire readers to look further for themselves, confident that they will arrive at a deeper undestanding of human behaviour.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore. To get started finding In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
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Pages: —

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Phaidon Press Limited

Release: 1979

ISBN: 0714820180

Description: The sight of people performing actions that seem superficially strange prompts an inquiry into not only what they are doing but why. In the context of folklore the participants often do not know the answer. They are repeating a ritual inherited from generations of ancestors, and often the explanations they give are decidedly garbled. By probing deep, however, it is usually possible to discover some grain of logic behind what may seem to be absurd behviour or belief.Civilization tends to be a rather thin veneer concealing a mass of primitive instincts and atavistic memories. Christianity is one of a succession of religions in which men have sought for an explanation of the mysteries of life and death. Arriving comparatively late in historfy, it grafted its basic tenets on age-old beliefs and customs which were too powerful to eradicate.A student of folklore encounters a number of strata of religious beliefs and practices, associated with a succession of invaders (Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Celts), all overlying a basic animism. A constant figure in ancient mythology was the Earth Mother, still remembered in the Corn Goddess or Kern Baby, whose image in straw is fashioned to celebrate the climax of harvest. The celebration of Samhain, when the Otherworld becomes temporarily entangled with our own, survives in Hallowe'en, though Christianized as All Saint's Day and with its liveliest features, notably bonfires, dispersed over the calendar. The Horn Dance, still performed at Abbots Bromley, the West Country legends of fairies and pixies, the mumming plays and the Morris dancers, and dim recollections of initiation rites into secret orders, as at the Weyhill Horn Supper, take us back to primeval days.In this book, the distinguished author of a number of volumes on folklore, surveying the field, attempts to inspire readers to look further for themselves, confident that they will arrive at a deeper undestanding of human behaviour.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore. To get started finding In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore

In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore

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