Western Folklore

Devoured by Ravenous Spirits: Absurd Deaths, Obscure Diagnosis, and the Phi Pob Tradition in Northeast Thailand

Kanya Wattanagun

ABSTRACT: Phi pob (ผีปอบ)—a kind of malevolent spirit in a Northeastern Thai supernatural tradition—is an actual being within a uniquely configured world built from a peculiar concoction of phenomenal, societal, and ideational ingredients. Per an inquiry into the configuration of this world, I argue that: 1) The term “belief” is reductive when applied to the phi pob tradition, which is grounded in a distinct reality as lived and experienced by the tradition bearers rather than a mere function of their peculiar worldviews or cultural lenses. 2) Reflexivity in belief studies can be benefited by the notion of different realities in variously constituted worlds. Ethnographers can take full account of tradition bearers’ perspectives and scrutinize their etic viewpoints by asking: Why do I take their realities as beliefs? KEYWORDS: phi pob, Northeast Thailand, belief tradition, experiential source theory, ontological turn

Abduction Ballads in Indigenous Folktales: An Interpretive Reconstruction

Segun Omósulé

ABSTRACT: The abduction of innocents during the era of slavery and slave trade for which the western world may be adjudged culpable was a nagging question to African peoples. This study explores the oral tales of banditry and kidnappings and shows that though banditry was present in a ballad and an Ifá folktale, it was difficult for people to establish a connection between the two and properly interpret the ballad, as they could not link these with the malaise of the era. The study concludes that bandits might be seen as predators in search of prey and recommends that the western world might have attained its present economic and social heights on the strength of the inhumanity of man to man. KEYWORDS: folktale, abduction, ballads.

Advancing Folkloristics (click on title for full text)
Elliott Oring

Michael P. Branch. On the Trail of The Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer. (New York: Pegasus Books, 2022. Pp. xiii + 253, 16 plates, author›s note, prologue, acknowledgments, endnotes, index. $18.95 paper.)

Reviewed by Su Bing

Guy Tal. Art and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Italy. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. Pp. 376, 110 illustrations, bibliography, index. €177.00 eBook and Hardcover.)

Reviewed by John Bodner and Crystal Rose

Laura M. Holzman. Contested Image: Defining Philadelphia for the Twenty-First Century. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 198, acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $99.50 hardbound, $29.95 paperback.)

Reviewed by James I. Deutsch

Steve Cushing. Blues Before Sunrise 2: Interviews from the Chicago Scene. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019. Pp. ix-235, introduction, photographs, index. $24.95 paper.)

Reviewed by Mark Allan Jackson

Jeana Jorgensen. Fairy Tales 101: An Accessible Introduction to Fairy Tales. (Monee, IL: Fox Folk Press, 2022. Pp. 1 + 362, introduction, glossary, bibliography, index, acknowledgments, about the author. $17.99 paper, $9.99 Kindle.)

Reviewed by Steven Merrell

Andrew Peck. Digital Legend and Belief: The Slender Man, Folklore, and the Media. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023. pp. vii + 251, illustrations, acknowledgments, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $79.95 hardcover.)

Reviewed by Jordan Rindenow

Natalie K. Zelensky. Performing Tsarist Russia in New York. Music, Émigrés, and the American Imagination. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 235, acknowledgments, note on transliteration, introduction, five chapters, and epilogue with notes, photographs, music scores, bibliography, index. $35 paper.)

Reviewed by A. Dana Weber