(E)migrating Legends and Sea Change

Studia Celto-Slavica, 2021

This paper will analyse and assess material contained in a corpus of maritime memorates, or stories of the sea, collected in Ireland and Scotland, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is based on the Ulster University research project ‘Stories of the Sea: A Typological Study of Maritime Memorates in Modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic Folklore Traditions’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and aims to add to previous published studies on this subject, including Fomin and Mac Mathúna 2010, 2015, 2016. The focus of this paper is on matters relating to fishing, fishermen and their boats, in Ireland, especially on the Gaelic-speaking western seaboard, and to a lesser extent in Scotland, during the period under consideration. Most of the narrators and some of the collectors themselves were fishermen, and the close bond and shared beliefs and taboos between informant and collector serves to emphasise the personal nature of the accounts. The information gain...

Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador

Cosmos, 2016

The uses of increasingly sophisticated technologies and wider fields of comparison have enabled researchers to explore the history of tales in a considerably deeper timeframe than was heretofore possible. The linking of such extended comparisons with genetic evidence has begun to lead to a clearer understanding of the migration of tales. Central to this progress has been the work of Yuri Berezkin and his studies interpreting the global distribution of ‘motifs’. His results, available online in distribution maps and interpreted in his publications, provide the potential for a new perspective on long-standing questions regarding the history of Scottish storytelling traditions: How old are our stories and what are their origins? We look briefly at the history of research into the origins of folktales, Scotland’s part in it viewed through the work of the Victorian folktale collector John Francis Campbell, and advances over the past few decades. Following this is a selection from a list of items from our archived collections and fieldwork, compiled earlier by the writer with a view to supplementing Berezkin’s data for Scotland, together with geographical distributions and comments. KEYWORDS: folktales, Scotland, prehistory, comparative mythology.

Ethnologies, 2005

2015

This dissertation explores the worlds in which the first permanent inhabitants of the island of Newfoundland situated themselves. People of these First Nations lived in Newfoundland for thousands of years during the Archaic (5500–3200 uncalibrated years BP), leaving material traces in the form of objects and site locations. The three analyses presented herein use these material traces to investigate movements and contacts across the island, different expressions of burial ceremonialism, group identity, and ethnicity, and re-introduces the use of “country” to refer to land occupied by separate indigenous groups. Least-cost paths are used to model precontact routes of travel and suggest that a number of significant places along the travel route network played an important role for Archaic islanders. It suggests Burgeo and Back Harbour were central places, that the Deer Lake-Grand Lake junction was of particular ceremonial importance, and that Port au Choix was purposefully positioned at a cultural boundary. The investigation of the landscape setting and burial assemblages of Newfoundland’s only two known Archaic burial grounds at various scales further demonstrates important differences present between the burials at Port au Choix and Back Harbour, suggesting they were intended to fulfill slightly different roles. Significant differences in their burial assemblages indicate that they are likely the result of different groups of people, with Port au Choix acting as a gathering place for multiple groups. The comparative analysis of stone tool assemblages from Newfoundland and its adjoining mainland regions reveals the presence of at least three contemporary and spatially distinct technological complexes on the island. Distinct regional patterns in access to food resources, burial ceremonialism, and location along the travel route network support the presence of multiple cultural groups in Archaic Newfoundland. This dissertation argues for the recognition of three ethnic groups sharing the island, people inhabiting separate countries who saw each other as different and maintained these differences over time despite repeated contacts and exchanges. It is time to move beyond the limiting notion of a single group of Maritime Archaic Indians, a concept that over generalizes the complexity of the worlds present in Archaic Newfoundland.

Gaelic oral narratives recorded from the Nova Scotian community about their relations with Indigenous Americans, from their first encounters through later settlement, do not reflect the essentialist notions of racialism (inherent superiority rooted in biology) or even the presumptions of linear social evolution dominant in imperial discourse. They instead depict a meeting of kindred peoples who resolved competing interests on commonly understood terms, even if these resolutions involved contests of strength and brawn. At the same time, the tales reveal a sense of guilt about occupying territories once inhabited by Indigenous Americans.

Ethnologies, 2004

1995

Honko, L. Memorat och folktroforskning. In: Rooth A. B. (ed.) Folkdikt och folktro. Lund, 1978, pp. 93-105. Singe r, M. When a Great Tradition Modernizes. An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization. Chicago, 1972, p. 320. Brunvand, J. H. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: Urban Legends and Their Meanings. London, 1981/1983, pp. 27-45. Klintberg, B. af. Svenska folksagner. Stockholm, 1972, p. 331. Goss, M. The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers. Wellingborough, 1984. Klintberg, B. af. Do the Legends of Today and Yesterday Belong to the Same Genre? In: Rorich, L., Wienzer-Piepo, S. (eds.) Storytelling in Contemporary Societies. Tubingen, 1990.

Ethnologies, 2005