Odd Player

The heroine Eleni Gage (Gatzoyianni) was one of the many victims of the atrocities committed during the Greek Civil War. Many may be familiar with her story via the film Eleni. This book, however, tells the story of another Eleni Gage who, in accordance with the papponymous naming tradition of Greece, was given the name of her paternal grandmother. North of Ithaka reflects her personal quest to retrace her roots and visit the house where her grandmother was imprisoned before her execution. In seeking information about her grandmother, the author also discovers the culture in which she lived. Her account is not only a moving testimony, but also a treasury of folk custom and tradition.

In the village of Lia, just below the Albanian border, the author’s main purpose is to rebuild her grandparents’ ruined house. Her efforts are beset with interesting challenges that provide us with much information on folk customs. For instance, due to the negative associations of the house, she is warned not to proceed with any renovation and her aunts tell her that if she does so she will “be killed by Albanians and eaten by wolves” (pp. 15 and 19). Here one can see that historically the word “Albanian” (Alvanos ) has had similar connotations to the word Arapis (a pejorative form of “Arab”) and was invoked as a phovitro, or bogeyman, especially to frighten children.

The author hires stonemasons to rebuild the house, and at each phase in the construction interesting customs are shared. For instance, before building can take place the old stone foundations are unearthed. As in other parts of Greece, a cock is killed and its head buried in the stonework, while its meat is fed to the builders (p. 116). However, we are also told of another custom seldom encountered elsewhere whereby “masons would place a coin on the cornerstones of a house to make it siderenio, strong as metal” (p. 67). On completion of the house “the owner adorns a wooden cross with oranges and money-filled handkerchiefs, then plants it like a flag on top of her new roof” for the builders to claim (p. 11). This flag ( flambouro ) is met throughout the Balkans in the context of wedding ritual, and apples may replace the oranges. Indeed, one wedding wish, kalorziko or “good roots,” is also made to someone on moving to a new home.

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Border-Crossing is a series of fifteen papers based on the proceedings of an international conference entitled “Mumming in Cross-Border and Cross-Community Contexts” held at the University of Ulster’s Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages in Derry, in 2003.

Three of the papers are directly concerned with mumming and rhyming in and around the border areas between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Taken together, these three papers build up a very vivid picture of how the mummers or rhymers of this area operated in the past and how the traditions have developed. In the 1930s and 1940s the mummers were not seen as a Catholic tradition. The houses of both Catholics and Protestants would be visited, and in some cases Protestants took part. The whole event would culminate in a mummers’ ball to which the whole community was invited, regardless of political and religious affiliations. After a decline during the troubles, there was a period when the mummers became a nationalistic expression. More recently, there has been an increase in groups of mummers in the area, and performances have moved from houses to community centres and pubs. Collections are made for charities, and the mummers’ dance has become a fundraiser. These performances may be in Catholic or Protestant venues, and cross-cultural charities are chosen to appeal to both sides of the community.

A fourth paper covers much of the same ground, but goes on to examine the apparent lack of texts in the Irish language. The author believes that although the main texts are of English origin, there are remnants of an Irish tradition within the ancillary characters. For instance, the doctor’s speech from the Antrim/West Tyrone/Armagh area has a series of impossible ingredients in the doctor’s cure. These can be closely matched to Irish texts of riddles for a cure for whooping cough. The author also hypothesises that the characters of Jack Straw and the Green Knight are actually two characters from an eighteenth-century Irish play (Sir Sopin and the Irish Chieftain, respectively). He surmises that an original Irish play has been supplanted by the English play, but that these independent characters have been retained.

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Last night I watched The Da Vinci Code on Blu-ray disc. I had already read before hand.

Firstly, the film was outstanding! I didn’t really know what to expect from it. In fact, I went expecting it to be rather mediocre. I was wrong; the film was perfect on all accounts.

Dan Brown’s story is thoroughly breathtaking and gripping. Whether you believe it or not, there is no doubt the storyline is fascinating. It is so cleverly written. The plot is complicated but, as with the book, it is explained perfectly.

Brown created some brilliant characters and the actors were perfect for their parts.

The film was long but I was gripped and it certainly did not feel too long and nor did it drag on.

I thoroughly recommend the film (and the book) to anyone.

To say that the late Alan Dundes (1934–2005) was a monument in folklore studies is to state the obvious. Almost more than any other figure in the discipline, Dundes helped to define the academic trends of research and analysis for two generations of American folklorists. He was a prolific writer, often publishing in hard-to-obtain journals, with material frequently being out of print soon after publication. Although Dundes wrote several books, his primary means for disseminating his ideas was through the essay or article. Therefore, it is a suitable tribute to such an important scholar that his colleague Simon J. Bronner should have taken up the task of retrieving and assembling a goodly body of Dundes’s work, and publishing it in this collection of essays. In The Meaning of Folklore, Bronner has brought together twenty articles assembled under two rubrics, “Structure and Analysis” and “Worldview and Identity.” These articles cover the whole of the forty-year period of Dundes’s research and thus constitute a general overview of and introduction to his thinking. Suitably, Bronner has placed first the early article “Folklore as a Mirror of Culture” (1969), which stresses Dundes’s argument about the relationship between folklore and culture and how his view differs from that of the great American anthropologist Franz Boas and his school. The ensuing wide range of articles cover subjects such as structuralism as an analytical method, psychological analyses—especially relating to subliminal sexual innuendo, analyses of discreet folklore subjects both verbal and behavioural, comparative analyses of non-western (European) materials, and a great deal more. This book is a rich treasury that will repay re-reading several times.

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