Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Stay-at-home shelfie #26



Now it's the Fairy Tale and Folklore Bookshelf, where the shelves are wide enough that it takes two pictures to display each one adequately. Some of these are among the oldest books in the room. The two-volume set at the far left is the Encylopædia of Superstition, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World. That's the short title, anyway. The longer one is one of those that fills most of the title page. This is the 1971 Gale Research Company facsimile reprint of the 1903 edition.

Up next is Alice Bertha Gomme's somewhat confusingly titled two volumes. The spine, as you can see, reads Dictionary of British Folk-Lore Part I. Traditional Games Vol. I. The title page, however, states The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (with, again, a much longer subtitle), in two volumes. Vol. I, published in 1894, is Accroshay through Nuts in May. Vol. II, published in 1898, is Oats and Beans through Would You Know. Parents stuck at home with children during this pandemic could probably use some of the ideas from these books. For example, there is "Chinny-mumps," a schoolboys' game "consisting in striking the chin with the knuckles; dextrously performed, a kind of time of produce." Umm. On the other hand maybe just give them the iPad.

As any good folklore collector should, I have a few Grimms' Fairy Tales (or Grimms' Household Tales) volumes. None, however, is the 1900 Ward, Lock & Co. edition that I wrote about in 2012; I gifted that one. In its place, there is a 1915 volume translated by Margaret Hunt (orange), an 1885 volume translated by Lucy Crane (green), and a 1900 volume translated by Beatrice Marshall (blue).

Also on this shelf are Legends of the Rhine; Wonder Tales from China Seas, which figured in this oddball 2013 post; Albanian Wonder Tales; and the gorgeous A.L. Burt edition of Jack the Giant Killer and Other Stories. Finally, there are two academic volumes about the wonderful Baba Yaga and her place in folklore.







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