Adelaida Caballero
From sex with demon mermaids to ritual vivisections: Women’s stories and how they are changing in Equatorial Guinea (2014 – 2024)"
March 2024.
Speaker's Biography:
Adelaida Caballero (Mexico 1986) is a writer, editor, and researcher. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Uppsala University. Her work analyzes routinized forms of violence in relation to ethnic and identitarian discourses in authoritarian contexts. Her doctoral dissertation, Shortchanged: Elderly Women Street Vendors in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, is an ethnographic exploration of what it means to be a woman and a person in an Afro-Bantu traditionalist dictatorship. Adelaida is also a published poet and the coordinator of Habitación 323, a pro-bono initiative that offers literary workshops and basic editorial training to young Equatoguinean writers who struggle against the lack of freedom of press in the country.
Abstract:
As of January 2024, the little-known nation of Equatorial Guinea (West/Central Africa) is the world’s longest running dictatorship. A five decade-long history of politically motivated violence, combined with pervasive African discourses that link power and wealth with occult practices, makes people live in a permanent state of anxiety. Given the traditionalist streak of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s brand of authoritarianism, women are susceptible to routinized forms of violence that range from gender prejudice to systematic sexual exploitation. Guineana women cope with their vulnerability by telling stories that make their experiences graspable and communicable. These stories, however, are changing. Previously featuring ‘traditional’ elements such as witchcraft passed down through the generations and sex pacts with demon mermaids, women’s stories now focus on acts of direct bodily harm such as kidnappings and ritual vivisections for the purpose of cannibalism allegedly practiced by ambitious politicians. Building on ethnographic material collected over a span of ten years and two long-term periods of anthropological fieldwork in Malabo, the Equatoguinean capital, my presentation seeks to understand how and why women’s stories are changing. It suggests that as political instability and economic precarity have increased over the past decade, preexisting fears toward the prospect of occult aggression have resulted in factual episodes of untold violence, subsequently turning women’s coping narratives into shocking cautionary tales about the dangers of mingling with ruthless ‘big men’.
Vladimír Bahna
Supernatural beliefs between experiences and testimonies. Uncertain minds in uncertain worlds
December 2023.
Speaker's Biography:
Vladimír Bahna, PhD is a senior researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences. His research interests include religion, ritual behavior, and narrative traditions, with special attention to personal experience narratives. In recent years, he has also been working on conspiracy theories. His research paradigm is evolutionary and cognitive anthropology and naturalistic approaches to the study of cultural and social phenomena.
Abstract:
In this talk, I will present my research on personal experience narratives about encounters with the supernatural, which was summarized in my book Supernatural Experiences and the Narrative Mind: Social Contagion of Memories (published in Slovak Nadprirodzené skúsenosti a naratívna myseľ. Sociálna nákazlivosť spomienok, 2019). My goal is to bring a new perspective to the study of oral tradition by integrating folkloristics with cognitive sciences. Using narrative material from field research in northwestern Slovakia, I will show that the similarities across personal testimonies about encounters with the supernatural and the transmission dynamics of these narratives can be illuminated by psychological knowledge regarding human perception, memory, and social communication. On the one hand, the beliefs and stories shared in a society directly influence how people perceive events. On the other hand, when we publicly share our experiences, our memories are gradually transformed into a conventional form and enriched with “traditional” motifs without realizing it. Psychological insights into when and how collectively shared beliefs and social conventions may influence individual perceptions and memories show that the underlying cognitive mechanisms are not only associated with uncertainty and innate biases to cope with it. I will argue that this creates a specific psychological niche for distinct narrative traditions in which first-hand testimonies play an essential role.
Eda Kalmre
The Lilac Lady: The Etiology of a Collective Belief-Legend (A case study)
October 2023.
Speaker's Biography:
Eda Kalmre is senior research fellow at the Department of Folkloristics of the Estonian Literary Museum. Her research interests include Estonian children and youth lore, the types of Estonian folktales, history and methodology of folklore, contemporary media and storytelling, rumours and urban legends. She is the author of several articles, anthologies, and textbooks. She is a member of the editorial boards of important Estonian and international journals and publications. Here monographs are What a Wonderful World of Legends (ELM Scholarly Press 2018) and The Human Sausage Factory: A Study of Post-War Rumour in Tartu (Rodopi 2013), the latter of which won the International Society of Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) Brian McConnell Award for Best Legend and Folklore Research.
Abstract:
The lecture will analyse the emergence and the stages of development of a ghost story, formed about a century years ago, and related to the present-day building of the Literary Museum and its collective. The investigation builds heavily on the theories on the development and elaboration of legends by Lauri Honko, Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi, and Jans Harold Brunwand and Bill Ellis. It also contributes to the achievements of contemporary legend research. Among other things, the talk highlights the extent to which a specific narrator can influence the creation of a story and its persistence in the repertoire. It also dwells on the role of community and media in the formation and preservation of the legend, and how the fiction and reality – persons, locations and (tragic) events – appear side by side in the story. The analysis is based on participant observations over more than two decades, archival materials and almost thirty interviews.
Andrea Kitta
God Gave Me an Immune System and that’s Good Enough for Me! Religious Belief, Anti-masking, and Anti-Vaccination Sentiments During COVID-19
April 2023.
Speaker's Biography:
Andrea Kitta is a folklorist with a specialty in medicine, belief, and the supernatural. She is also interested in Internet folklore, narrative, and contemporary (urban) legend. Her current research includes: vaccines, pandemic illness, contagion and contamination, stigmatized diseases, disability, health information on the Internet and COVID-19. Dr. Kitta is the recipient of the Bertie E. Fearing Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010-2011), received a Teacher/Scholar award from ECU (2015-16) and the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award (2018-2019). Her monograph, Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor, and Risk Perception, won the Brian McConnell Book Award in 2012. Her monograph The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore won the Chicago Folklore Prize and Brian McConnell Book Award in 2020.
Abstract:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many outspoken religious groups declared that they didn’t need masks or vaccines because they were protected by God and the immune system He designed. This conflict between science and religion is not new, but highlights one area of vaccine hesitancy that is often misunderstood. In this presentation, I’ll explore the logic and belief of the intersection of religion, freedom, and the COVID-19 vaccine. In media interviews, when I’ve been asked about religious vaccine hesitancy, most outlets have assumed that smaller groups, such as the Amish or Jehovah’s Witnesses, are the most likely culprits instead of larger group like Catholics and Evangelical Christians. Even though the leaders of these denominations support vaccination, their followers often use otherwise dismissed arguments to justify their personal beliefs, demonstrating themselves as “true believers.” Historically, rejecting what church leaders say would have caused rejection from the group, however, in this brave new world, individuals justify their personal belief systems over the official belief systems.
Daisy Ahlstone
Manufacturing Cryptids
March 2023.
Speaker's Biography:
Daisy Ahlstone is a folklorist and PhD student in comparative studies at the Ohio State University. Their research interests include humanities research methodologies, ecological metaphor, and expanding concepts of community. They also founded WiseFolk Productions, which is an organization that shares the importance of community by drawing the public’s attention to the folklore happening around us every day through digital content.
Abstract:
This lecture describes how animals with “contested existences” (cryptids) come to hold such a title. Using the recently extinct thylacine as a guiding example, Ahlstone walks us through the features, stories, and material culture that help to create cryptids, and rationalize belief in their existence.
Kristina Radomirović Maček
Apocalyptic visions in contemporary conspiracy theories on Covid-19
February 2023.
Speaker's Biography:
University of Ljubljana. Her doctoral dissertation, “Contemporary End of the World Narratives and Notions in the Area of Former Yugoslavia”, introduces a case study of Covid-19 conspiracy theories in the digital ecosystems of a post-socialist context.
Her main research focus relies on the anthropology of religion and folkloristics. She aims to use interdisciplinary approaches and is especially interested in digital ethnography, the theory of liminality, and contemporary folklore in the digital environment. She has published several articles on conspiracy theories (Studia Mithologica Slavica 2021, Etnolog 2022), apocalyptical myth as part of the modern nationalistic discourse (Ethnological Debates 2020), and end-of-the-world narratives in tradition in XIX and XX century folklore (Liceum 2019). She was one of the speakers at the first conference of the Center for Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic Studies in Heidelberg.
During the Covid-19 crisis, she actively participated in public debates about conspiracy theories and cooperated with the major Slovenian media houses to emphasize the significance of conspiracy theories in contemporary social life.
Abstract:
The imagination of the end world is grounded on social fears and relies on complex belief systems. Because of their megalomaniac narrative pretensions conspiracy theories are the hotbeds of apocalyptic visions. The perceptions of the upcoming catastrophe can be considered the basis of conspiratorial storytelling, as this talk argues. Predicting becomes revealing as the upcoming catastrophe is interpreted as a sign of a distorted present. Therefore, apocalyptic visions in conspiracy theories are not future phenomena but symbols and hyperboles of our present times. The dystopia of social control is an exaggerated manifestation of fears of being followed and owned in the profit-oriented times of consumerism and contemporary capitalism. After a short overview on the conspiracy theories as the apocalyptic fear generating belief narratives, I will move forward to four visions of the apocalypse that emerged from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Slovenian social media and among online communities during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Margaret Lyngdoh
Elemental Tradition Tropes in the Folklore of Water Among the Khasis of Northeast India
January 2023
Speaker's Biography:
Margaret Lyngdoh received her PhD in 2016 from the University of Tartu, Estonia. She has studied at Ohio State University, Columbus, USA and the National University of Ireland-University College Cork, Ireland as a visiting student during her doctoral studies. She was the 2016 Albert Lord Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri and received the Estonian Research Council Grant postdoctoral fellowship for her project “Tradition and Vernacular Discourses in the Context of Local Christianities in North-eastern India”, 2018-2021. Lyngdoh was the editor of the Journal of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR) 2019 -2022. She is a researcher at the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore and an executive member of the Belief Narrative Network of the ISFNR. Her research interests include indigenous folklore, indigenous ontologies, and the study of religion.
Abstract:
Water as the median of power in the folklore of the Khasi, an indigenous community in Northeast India, is presented in the multiple manifestations of magic and shapeshifting. Jhare name magic and human–animal transformations incorporate multiple tradition-tropes, one of which is water as divinity. Leaning heavily on empirical material derived from primary fieldwork, this talk will look at the folklore of water as is home of sanghkini shapeshifters or ‘hybrid’ persons who transform into were-snakes during the monsoon season. In the second case, water is Ñiaring, as is used in sorcery and rituals in Northern Khasi Hills. Looking at water as an elemental tradition trope allows disparate parts of Khasi community religious expression—gender switching in shapeshifter form; astral travel in dreams; multiple examples of ritual—to be viewed together as articulations of water as mediator, enabling new constellations of understanding. Narratives collected from Sangkhini were-snakes and Jhare magical ritual practitioners will be analysed in context, to show the prevalence and power of belief narratives to enable transmission and shape local cosmologies among the Khasi.
Jenny Butler
Fairy Belief Narratives, Indigenous Knowledge and Connection to Place
December 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Dr Jenny Butler is a Lecturer in the Study of Religions Department at University College Cork and is the President of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR). Her research focuses on otherworld traditions, intangible cultural heritage, ritual, and the intersections of religion and folklore. She is currently conducting an ethnographic research project on “Fairy Lore and Landscapes”: http://fairyloreandlandscapes.com/
Abstract:
This presentation approaches fairy belief narratives as indigenous knowledge, as cultural memory, and meaningful connection to the land and sites upon and within it. On the Irish landscape, there exist so-called “fairy places”, especially “fairy trees” (hawthorn) and “fairy forts” (ringforts). The Irish mythology records the aos sí, the mythical “people of the mounds” who inhabit the “hollow hills”, living underground beneath their human neighbours. The term “fairy” came to be used during the colonisation of Ireland when the population was forced to speak English instead of Gaelic and when the placenames were anglicised, thus losing meanings found in the native language. This, alongside many processes of change and modernisation, led to a disconnection of people and place particularly with regard to general awareness of how the otherworldly realm is intertwined with the physical terrain in the traditional worldview. This presentation explores the present-day status of fairy lore and connection to these sites. Based in ethnographic research in Ireland, reference will also be made to comparative research findings in Iceland and in Newfoundland, Canada.
Dagrún Ósk Jónsdottir
Gender-based Violence in Icelandic Folk Legends
November 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir defended her PhD thesis in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland last June. Her project focused on women, femininity and gendered power relations in Icelandic folk legends.
Abstract:
Violence takes on various forms in reality. It also appears in various forms in diverse sources, including folk legends. Here the focus will be placed on how domestic and sexual violence against women is presented in the Icelandic folk legend collections from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Violence plays a role in the subordination of women, and there is good reason to consider how violence against women is portrayed in the oral legends of the past. It is noteworthy how those legends dealing with gender-based violence are more often than not told by women, and in this regard, it is especially interesting to examine the legends collected by Torfhildur Þ. Hólm (1948-1918). In this talk I will among other things consider the effect these particular legends might have had on those who heard them and examine the roles of the legends in maintaining and shaping a discourse which in many cases may well have attempted to normalise this violence.
Stories can be an important tool for identifying, illuminating and discussing problems in society, something that became especially clear in the 2017 #metoo movement which played an important role in shedding light on old established attitudes regarding gender-based violence, many of which can also be found in the legends examined here.
Using the Icelandic legend collections in line with approaches drawn from gender studies, it is evident that the legends shine a valuable new light on social attitudes to gender-based violence in earlier times, underlining the value of reconsidering this archival material from a new viewpoint.
Bela Mosia, Georgia
Conspiracy Theories and Georgian Reality: From ancient past to modern life
September 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Bela Mosia is affiliated professor at Shota Meskhia State Teaching University of Zugdidi (Georgia).
Her main fields of research are folklore studies, ancient Georgian literature and religion.
Her research interests center around the theme how symbols, rituals and the history of thoughts are included in creating national values and culture.
Abstract:
In this lecture I will talk about conspiracy theories in present day Georgia. Contemporary folklore explores the popular foundations of conspiracy theories. As collective phenomenon, conspiracy theories are related to the history of thought and as such they reveal a lot about the psychological and emotional state of a nation. They are present in every aspect of modern life, and often serve as a source of politicization. Just like in most post-soviet countries, the political situation is complicated in Georgia. People are regularly confronted with manipulation by fake news and propaganda.
Folk memory refers to past events and has been passed orally from generation to generation. It also has a local significance and contributes to cultural traditions. Collective memory refers to shared memories, knowledge and information of a social group that is associated with the group’s identity. The lecture highlights how folklore and collective memory can contribute to the cultural identity of social groups in present day Georgia. It also stresses the need for a completely new and creative interpretation of folklore, according to which it could become a powerful resource and a potential knowledge base to counteract the harmful effects of mass manipulation and political propaganda.
Alexander Panchenko
A Religion of War: How Messianic Sentiments, Military Rituals, and Conspiracy Theories Made Putinism Effective
June 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Alexander Panchenko is a professor of the European University at St. Petersburg (Russia) and a visiting professor of the University of Tartu (Estonia). His research interests include vernacular religion, contemporary folklore and popular culture, new religious movements and New Age spirituality, anthropology of conspiracy theories.
Abstract:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought catastrophic consequences to all of Europe and might even lead to a global war. A large number of Russians have relatives and friends living in Ukraine. Yet, it is obvious that many Russian citizens uncritically believe the official propaganda put forth by Putin’s regime and support the war. In the lecture, I will try to make sense of this paradox and explain what kind of cosmology and ritual practice made Putinism as a political doctrine so successful with ordinary Russians.
Davide Ermacora
"The Good Old Method of the Nail”. Nail Murders and the ‘Nail in the Skull’ Legend
May 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Dr. Davide Ermacora earned his PhD in anthropology in 2017 at the University of Turin, Italy, and at the Lumière University, Lyon 2, France. He lectures in the anthropology of religion at the University of Turin, and he is joint editor of the Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief book series.
His primary research interests lie in the fields of folkloristics and history of religions, particularly in their shared aim to study historically and comparatively popular religious experiences. He is the author of Monstrous Animal Siblings in Europe: from the frater Salernitanorum to the sooterkin (2022). He recently edited Cesare Poppi’s Saggi di antropologia ladina e alpina, a three-volume set on the history and the anthropology of the Ladins of the Dolomites (2019-2020).
Abstract:
In this lecture I will examine medical, literary and folklore sources in which individuals are murdered by having nails hammered into their skulls. Nail murders emerge in Europe and China from the Middle Ages onwards. Particular attention will be given to the ‘nail in the skull’ complex of legends (ATU 960D ‘Toad on the Head of a Corpse’). The nail murder appears, in fact, as the core feature of the ‘nail in the skull’ legend. I look at this legend because: it is old (being first attested in Europe in the 16th or perhaps even in the 14th century); it was widespread (versions emerge from several European countries and the US); and it shows how folklore was successfully inserted in a literary frame in 19th-century France and Spain – to the point that literary renditions of the ‘nail in the skull’ legend have been considered to be a harbinger of detective fiction.
Petr Janeček
"The Ghost of Kyiv, White Tights and Spring Man: Eastern European Wartime Rumours in Comparative Perspective"
April 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Dr. Petr Janeček is Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague (Czechia). His academic interests include verbal folklore; the theory, methodology, and history of verbal folkloristics and European ethnology; and theoretical aspects of intangible cultural heritage. He published four annotated collections of Czech contemporary legends and rumours titled Černá sanitka (The Black Ambulance; 2006; 2007; 2008; 2020), annotated collection of contemporary Czech ghostlore Krvavá Máry (Bloody Mary; 2015) and extensive comparative monograph on Central and Eastern European versions of international migratory legend about Spring-heeled Jack Mýtus o pérákovi (The Myth of Spring Man, 2017), which will be published soon in English edition. He is currently researching contemporary legends and rumours, anecdotes, and jokes, and written and digital folklore.
Contact: petr.janecek@ff.cuni.cz
Abstract:
Wars and armed conflicts generate rumours as productively as any similar situations of extreme uncertainty and social anomia such as natural disasters or pandemics; actually, serious academic research of rumours started during the First and Second World War. On February the 24th 2022 a war started in the Ukraine. Almost immediately, wartime rumours and legends started to circulate not only orally but also electronically in social media, most notably in Twitter, Facebook and VKontakte. Some of them are ephemeral texts that can be labelled as hoaxes and fake news; some, however, revive folkloric themes and motifs deeply interwoven in (Eastern) European vernacular culture. The paper will discuss three emerging narrative themes related to the conflict in the Ukraine in a broader historical, geographical, and cultural perspective. These are 1.the Ghost of Kyiv, a fabled Ukrainian flying ace gaining popularity during the first days of the conflict; 2. the mythical sniper called the Ukrainian Reaper; 3. the White Tights, a legendary elite European all-female sniper unit which has a long history in Russian military lore since the 1980s. These contemporary narratives will be compared with similar Eastern European rumours and legends from the 20th century and beyond.
Simon Young
"'Boggart Taxonomy: from Generic North English Ghoul to International Fantasy Goblin"
March 2022
Speaker's Biography:
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Abstract:
The boggart is an English bogie, found in parts of the north and midlands. For the last century folklorists (and artists and fiction writers) have described the boggart as a house goblin, one particularly associated with ‘Migratory Legend 7020 ‘Vain Attempt to Escape a Brownie/ Nisse’. But this has been to misconstrue the sense of ‘boggart’ in popular tradition. The collection of folklore from newly digitised nineteenth-century ephemera (particularly newspapers) and from still living populations shows that ‘boggart’ was a generic word. Indeed, ‘boggart’ could be used for any ambivalent solitary supernatural being. Yes, ‘boggart’ could refer to house goblins. But the word could also refer to will o’ the wisps, ghosts, demons, shape-shapers etc etc. In the talk we look at how the boggart served as a generic term in popular tradition. There it proved a keystone in supernatural folk taxonomy, and was regularly used in place-names and in legends tied to the landscape. We, afterwards, turn to look at how the word was unintentionally recast by folklorists (and derivative writers), who brought us the folkloresque boggart of Harry Potter and Spiderwick.
Mare Kõiva
"Wereseals, Merpeople and the Pharaoh: A Complex Phenomenon of Nordic and Baltic Folk Belief in Comparative Perspective"
February 2022
Speaker's Biography:
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Abstract:
Based on the rich collections of folklore of the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu (Estonia), the lecture introduces folk narratives about mythical creatures (‘the pharaoh’, wereseals, etc.) in the context of Nordic, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric narrative traditions and parabiblical folklore. It gives an overview of the most characteristic motifs, the origin, appearance, and habitat of these mythical creatures. Furthermore, it highlights several non narrative genres of folklore and visual art, and the intermedial interactions. It briefly discusses the influence of media and art on folk tradition.
Alevtina Solovyeva
"A miracle walking tree: The Supernatural in the Landscape Mythology and Social Space of Contemporary Mongolia"
January 2022
Speaker's Biography:
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Abstract:
The lecture is devoted to an unusual case of contemporary Mongolian place lore: a sacred tree, whose supernatural ability to move around features is a core motif both in narratives and ritual practices. This motif is connected to local traditions, mostly found in the neighbouring provinces in the central part of Mongolia, where I first became acquainted with the notion of a miraculous walking tree during my summer fieldworks in 2015 and 2016. All attempts to find examples of walking trees in other contemporary traditions in Mongolia, in the related regions such as Inner Mongolia, Buryatia, Kalmykia, and in the close Turkic and Altaic traditions, as well as in previous written sources failed to give any satisfactory results. Meanwhile, in the Mongolian internet and social media, the figure of the unusual tree has been present since 2011.
Despite its extraordinariness, this supernatural tree does not exist in a cultural vacuum in present-day Mongolia. The investigation has revealed a diversity of folk traditions and important cultural concepts that melted together to produce a breeding ground of beliefs, images and motifs. In this lecture, besides introducing the supernatural walking tree, I shall discuss its image, motifs, and rites in vernacular beliefs and practices, and explain its roles and functions in the life of contemporary Mongolian communities.
Eva Þórdís Ebenezersdóttir
"Yule Tide Belief and Activism. Stekkjastaur and His Brothers, from Past to Present into the Future"
December 2021
Speaker's Biography:
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Abstract:
The Icelandic Jólasveinar or Yule lads, 13 brothers and sons of Grýla, live in the mountains of Iceland and lay low for most of the year. On the eve of December 11th, the first one, Stekkjastaur, roams the land on foot, placing small presents in children’s shoes that have been placed in every child’s bedroom window for this purpose. And each night until Christmas the brothers come, one at a night, out from the darkness of winter to both scare us and treat us with their company in the advent of Christmas and winter solstice. After Christmas they leave in the same fashion, one a night but now without a trace.
The lads come from a peculiar family with a complicated legend history. They have proven to be very good at adapting to societal developments while also being a link to a strange and distant past. In the last 20 years or so they have gradually been adding to their role of bringing gifts and Yule, adapting to the worldview of the 21st century. As active participants in our society, they have advanced somewhat in technology (as much as a good internet connection can be established in the middle of mountains). They have become a part of the commercial and capitalist spirit of the modern X-mas. To balance that out they lend their fame to humanitarian work, and they are increasingly paying attention to multicultural elements and human diversity.
In this presentation Eva Þórdís Ebenezerdóttir and Stekkjastaur will lead you through the history and traditions of the Yule-family (including the Cat) as is possible, bringing you into the upcoming Yuletide with their current status and community commitments, and lastly give their thoughts and ponderings to where the Lads can go from here. Can they, and should they become activists and human rights advocates?
Robin Gwyndaf
"Magic, Reality and Relevance. Why do Certain Narratives Never Die? The Fairy Wife from a Welsh Mountain Lake and a Family of Renowned Physicians"
November 2021
Speaker's Biography:
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Abstract:
In an attempt to answer my own question (namely, why have some narratives stood the test of time?), I discuss a fascinating popular legend relating to a young farmer who marries a fairy woman from Llyn y Fan Fach, a mountain lake, near Llanddeusant, south-west Wales. [Llyn: ‘lake’; y Fan: ‘the peak’; Fach: ‘ little’. ML (Migratory Legend) 5090: ‘Married to a fairy woman’.] According to the legend, the parents’ eldest son became the founder of a long line of renowned physicians, known as ‘The Physicians of Myddfai’, who set down their medical recipes during the 13th and 14th centuries. It is believed that one or two of their descendants still practise medicine today. Also, in 2014, the Physicians of Myddfai Society was formed. In considering why the above narrative is one of the most popular in Wales today, the following three points are discussed: 1. The legend’s form, structure and aesthetic qualities, with reference to the ‘epic laws of folk narrative’ (Axel Olrik). 2. The fusion of tradition and history, and the joining together of an early lake legend with much later local onomastic traditions relating to the physicians. 3. The very important and relevant message in this legend – a message we need to treasure and proclaim today more than ever, namely: how health and medical care is such a priceless gift and a great blessing to mankind. And at this point I will offer to the listeners a [new?] folkloristic Latin term. I suggest not only the well established term: Homo narrans (‘the storytelling human being’), but also: Homo praedicans (‘the proclaiming human being’): ‘the one who shares the elevating message with others’.
K. K. Gopalakrishnan
"Theyyam, the Ancient Ritual Folk-art Tradition of Hindus and Muslims in Northern Kerala (India)"
October 2021
Speaker's Biography:
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Abstract:
Theyyam (or Teyyam) is one of India’s highly captivating ritual folk-art traditions, which is a religiously deep-rooted performance, a living tradition, and a piece of intangible cultural Heritage. It is a combination of emotion, devotion, dance, myth and at the same time a communication between supernatural beings (deities, ancestors, spirits, ghosts, ancestors) and humans. The different types of Theyyam are organized at various calendar feasts, and their date is also determined by astrological regulations. The rituals are performed close to the local shrines, or in front of the houses of ancestor-worship which belong to the patronizing families. The usually male dancers wear enchanting attire and fabulous make-up. Theyyam is a tradition shared by both Hindus and Muslims of Northern Kerala, and its subtypes are classified according to the numerous deities appearing in the ritual. The lecture will give a broad overview of the unique ritual performance and the folk narratives attached to it. It will also provide authentic insight, as the lecturer’s maternal ancestors have been among the prominent patrons of Theyyam for centuries.