Folklore

Na noite chuvosa de 21 de Junho de 2014, o Grupo Folclórico de Coimbra sobe a um pequeno coreto improvisado no Largo do Marquês de Pombal, em plena Alta Universitária, para dar início às celebrações das “Fogueiras de São João”. Perante um público de estudantes, funcionários e professores universitários, cantam vários temas do seu reportório, inclusive a cantiga de roda “O Preto”. A audiência é então brindada com rimas sobre como “o preto à sombra da bananeira” espera “a preta para começar a brincadeira”, e ainda referências ao vício no dominó, e a um sombrio “mestre” do casal.
24 anos após Os Negros em Portugal de Tinhorão, que abertura existe para um estudo sério do papel do impacto dos negros e de culturas negro/africanas no folclore Português? Terá a recente vaga de “patrimonialização” – que por vezes ata as mãos de historiadores e antropólogos ao torna-los fieis depositários da “pureza” e “portugalidade” das tradições classificadas – contribuído para tornar as coisas mais fáceis, ou a herança negra continua a ser anátema? Por outro lado, a fixação dos cientistas sociais no multiculturalismo urbano de Lisboa/Porto (em que o estudo da presença e integração de comunidade africanas parece assumir um ex nihilo pós-25 de Abril), por oposição ao relego para segundíssimo plano do estudo de um interior cujo folclore é menosprezado, ajuda ou atrapalha o reconhecimento deste legado? Em Andam faunos pelos bosques Aquilino refere uma aldeia duriense povoada por mandingueiros – poderíamos hoje admitir esta influência guineense em “patrimónios” como os lenços de namorados?

Consideration is given to how elements of the occult: witchcraft, magic and sorcery may be identified in the archaeological record. Working definitions of occult terminology are established before proceeding to propose a new approach, which triangulates data from historic and folkloric sources with archaeological evidence, to establish contextual narratives that stand for the past. Excavation of an occult ritual site at Barway, Cambridgeshire is presented to demonstrate how the approach works in practice. Archaeological evidence, combined with local folklore and historic accounts of spells and sorcery, identify the site as the locus of occult activity performed by cunning folk, or ‘white’ witches, during the seventeenth-century.

KEYWORDS
OCCULT, CUNNING FOLK, WITCH, WITCHCRAFT, SPELL, MAGIC, SORCERY, FOLKLORE, EAST ANGLIA, ELY, SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY, GRIMOIRE, PENDLE WITCH TRIAL, MATTHEW HOPKINS, JOHN STEARNE.

When I first began hearing ghost stories at ETSU, I realized something: the undead are bridges. The undead – those ephemeral beings in their multiple variations – are bridges between the seen and the invisible, the known and the unknown, the understood and the unexplained, mystery and science. A ghost tale can hold us together in the communal bliss of fear around a campfire. They can also pit us against one another. The undead are simultaneously the persons they used to be, as well as the apparitions they are now. They connect the past with the present. They – like the past – are dead, but very much alive in the present as they haunt places and people. They are somewhere “in-between,” having never completely crossed the threshold into whatever lies beyond. I realized my autoethnographic work is similarly haunted. Ghosts haunt the narrative and autoethnographic work of others too. Haunting, however, is not one-sided. Autoethnographers are not only haunted; they haunt as well.

Neal Norrick presents the interface of tradition and individual agency in proverb performance as a paradox, a rhetorical recusation in which the proverb initiator fades into the background of societal opinion while gaining the upper hand (1994). I will argue that we don’t need to leave ourselves in the place of paradox, but can attain clarification of how proverbs operate by applying the concept of deictic projection to explore how proverbs operate in the space between quote and story.

Striking parallels exist between several ancient celtic sovereignty myths (both Irish and Welsh) on one side, and modern "Fairy Wives" from Galicia and Asturias, as recorded by folklorists and collected, in one case, in trial proceedings. This essay advances the hypothesis that these modern Iberian fairies most probably derive from a common, Celtic tradition which, unlike what happened in Ireland and Wales, wasn`t recorded by ancient sources but survived to our days in oral tradition.