FOLKLORE
We could have had this field in the first
hour through the subdiscipline of archae-
ology, when a Paleolithic flint miner was dug
out of Belgian soil, where he had lain for
millennia crushed among his bone tools. But
no one wondered whether this ancient miner
died like all miners, cursing his trade. He was
work only for the anthropometrist. a
hundred thousand men like him lie under
American coal fields, but so far as anthro-
pologists are concerned, they might as well
have existed in another dimension, like the
totemic figures in the Australian tjukurpa. In
both cases the dimension is here, now. At
this moment of writing, a song on the
Country-Western charts has a girl and her
father talking about their lost country:
Daddy, won’t you take me back to
Muhlenberg County,
Down by the Green River where paradise
lay?
I’m sorry, My Dear, but you’re too late
in asking;
Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it
away.
A review of the best book in its field
ordinarily should speak about its content.
But the heavy significance of Only a Miner is
exemplary-to get our young scholars out of
the hogans where they are bedevilling the
poor Navahos and into the mines.
Green himself is an exemplar. Like other
promethean scholars from Edward Burnett
Taylor to Buckminster Fuller, Green had the
good fortune of being denied entry into
conventional education. I met Green first as
a fellow carpenter and persuaded him he
might be listened to if he acquired a
doctorate-for which God, I pray, may one
day forgive me. Even then he was assembling
some of the massive data of this book,
unnoticed, unhonored. This is the first
culmination of his work, a credit to the
profession of the hammer as well as the pen,
and proving the truth inherent in the
dedication he makes to his father, that “the
skills of hand and head are one.”
Icelandic Folktales and Legends. JAC-
QUELINE SIMPSON, ed. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972. viii +
206 pp., bibliography and abbreviations,
indexes, $7.50 (cloth).
1895
Reviewed by CRAIG V . SHIELDS
Ottawa, Ontario
J6n h a s o n ’ s two large volumes of
Icelandic folklore were first published more
than a century ago. His work represents,
according to editor Simpson, “one of the
major products of the great nineteenth-
century period of folklore collecting” (p. 1).
Yet despite the existence of this rich
collection, the folktales and legends of
Iceland have remained virtually unknown to
most English readers. The problem has been
one of rare and inadequate translation.
The present work should go a long way to
improve this situation. The collection in-
cludes new translations of some eighty-five
tales selected primarily from Amason’s
chapters on supernatural beings, ghosts, and
magic. The material has been rearranged into
seven chapters. Each chapter contains tales
dealing with specific topics: “The Hidden
People,” “Trolls,” “Water-Dwellers,”
“Ghosts,” “Black Magic,” “Buried Treasure,”
and “God and the Devil.”
Notes have been added by the editor and
follow each of the individual tales. They
usually give information concerning when,
where, and how the tale was collected.
Where variants of a tale exist, the notes
provide cross-references and indicate the
earliest known version of that particular
story-type in Iceland. In some cases they
also give background on local personalities,
places, or historical events mentioned in a
tale. Less frequently, they elaborate upon
some relevant aspect of Icelandic custom or
belief.
There is also an “Index of Tale Types”
which draws attention to the affinities
between the Icelandic tales and those of
other Scandinavian countries, or in some
instances, those of the British Isles. The
editor uses the Aame-Thompson classifica-
tion for Marchen and the Christiansen
system for Sagen or “migratory legends.”
For similarities to British tales the references
are to Briggs’ dictionary of British folktales.
The tales themselves should appeal to
those with a humanistic interest in folklore.
They are, as one would expect, full of
humor and pathos, with an occasional bit
of folk wisdom thrown in for good measure.
The translations retain the abrupt shifts in
tense and person, simplicity of sentence
1896 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
structure, and economy of modifiers typical
of the Icelandic oral narrative style. The
result is a collection of highly readable
stories.
Assessment of the book from a strictly
anthropological point of view is somewhat
more difficult. By design it is a purely
descriptive work. There is no attempt, for
example, either to interpret the material in
terms of current theory, or to relate the tales
to Icelandic culture and society.
The book’s value to anthropologists,
then, most likely will be as a resource. There
has been considerable translation of the
medieval poetry and sagas of Iceland as well
as the folklore from other west European
c o u n t r i e s . T h i s well-written, well-
documented collection should begin to fill
the void in the literature between the two.
The Functions o f Folk Costumes in Mom-
vian Slovakia. PETR BOGATYREV.
Richard G. Crum, trans. Chapter by Boris
L. Ogibenin. Approaches to Semiotics, 5.
The Hague: Mouton, 1971. 107 pp.,
glossary illustrations, map. n.p. (cloth).
[Originally published as Vol. I of Publica-
tions of the Ethnographic Section of
Matica Slovenska, 1937.1
Reviewed by DAVID RODNICK
Texas Tech University
This monograph is one in a series edited
by Thomas A. Sebeok, entitled Approaches
to Semiotics, and represents a study first
published in Slovak by the Matica Slovenska
in Turciansky Svaty Martin in 1937 as
Volume I of the Publications of the Ethno-
graphic Section of the Matica Slovenska
(headquarters of the Slovak Cultural Na-
tionalist Movement) by Professor Bogatyrev
(then at the University of Bratislava and now
at Moscow University). Moravian Slovakia is
that area of the Czech lands that stretches
from south of Olomouc to slightly east of
Brno to the Slovakian border. Its folk
costumes were seen at festivals until World
War 11; they have not been used since then.
Professor Ogibenin’s introduction links
this monograph to the studies carried on by
[75,1973]
the Prague School of Structural Linguistics,
which before World War I1 was concerned
with “literary criticism, folklore, and the
functional and structural investigation of
popular customs and beliefs” (p. 9). Pro-
fessor Bogatyrev also worked closely with
Professor Roman Jakobson a t this time on
the structural study of folklore. His motiva-
tion for studying the symbolism of folk
costumes was that “wearing clothing is as
universal, constant and consequently as
natural a feature a s . . . using language for
communication. . . In human societies,
clothes, as a rule, . . . are subdivided into
those worn by men and those worn by
women, and into those worn by young and
those worn by old people” (p. 13).
In his study of the dress usage in the
villages of Moravian Slovakia, Bogatyrev
finds a number of “unconscious patterned
regularities which govern those customs
which function to show the wearer’s struc-
tural attitude within the community as
regards the community’s social, aesthetic,
moral and nationalistic ideals” (p. 14).
Costume signs in order to be correctly
understood must be learned in the same way
that different languages must be learned” (p.
20). Transposed into American culture, one
can say that, since marriage is socially
important to the bride, she therefore wears a
special costume or bridal outfit when she is
married in church. Women who want to
create the image of being considered “sexy”
wear slinky and tight black evening gowns.
Business executives who attend important
company banquest wear tuxedos. Per-
forming artists play the piano or violin in
evening dress. Generals wear insignia dif-
ferent from those of privates so that others
can see that they have higher social status
than non-commissioned officers or those of
lower-order ranks. Supreme Court justices, in
order to enhance their judicial dignity, wear
black gowns when they sit in court. As one
can see, all this states the obvious with a
vengeance. Although studies of this kind
Serve a purpose, their best utility is as
background for doing comparative studies.
But perhaps such obvious studies are needed
to help us understand the culture that exists
under our collective noses and that we all
take for granted.