This article presents the scholarly legacy of Bronislava Kerbelytė (1935–2024), a pioneering Lithuanian folklorist whose lifelong work significantly advanced the study of narrative folklore. Kerbelytė developed a unique methodology of structural-semantic text analysis, which redefined the classification of Lithuanian folktales, belief legends, local legends and anecdotes. Her approach challenged the limitations of the Aarne-Thompson (AT/ATU) and Proppian systems by introducing the concept of elementary plots, fundamental narrative units based on causality and semantic coherence. This method was applied to the extensive Catalogue of Lithuanian Narrative Folklore, covering over 85,000 texts. Although complex, her system offers deep insights into the thematic structure and cultural significance of folktales, revealing patterns in plot variation and human behaviour across narratives. Despite some international criticism regarding clarity and practicality, Kerbelytė’s work is praised for its originality and empirical rigor. Her contributions have influenced both national and international folkloristics, offering new perspectives on narrative analysis and folklore comparison. This article not only evaluates her methodology but also commemorates her role as a teacher, scholar, and leading figure in the field of folklore research.

Spring Man: A Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture, by Petr Janeček. Lexington Books, 2022. Ebook. 228 pp. £58.32. ISBN: 9781666913767

Nanfeng Nuo Dance is a traditional folk dance originating from ancient Chinese sacrificial rituals, specifically from Nanfeng county in Jiangxi province, China. This study aims to examine the evolutionary features, content characteristics, and inheritance situation of Nanfeng Nuo Dance. Through literature review, field research, and interdisciplinary analysis, this research explores the evolutionary features and content characteristics of Nanfeng Nuo Dance, while proposing strategies for its inheritance and development. The findings indicate that the evolutionary trajectory of Nanfeng Nuo Dance has transformed from a witchcraft ceremony into a form of cultural heritage, with each phase displaying distinct evolutionary features. In terms of content characteristics, the dance is primarily characterized by the expression of primitive desires, diverse deity worship, and unique local belief legends. However, regarding its inheritance, Nanfeng Nuo Dance faces challenges such as the deterioration of its cultural ecosystem, a shortage of successors, insufficient funding, and inadequate institutional support. The study suggests that to ensure the sustainable transmission of Nanfeng Nuo Dance, it is crucial to foster a supportive cultural ecosystem, cultivate inheritors, increase investment, and improve policies. In practical terms, the research proposes the establishment of a Nuo Dance Learning Center focused on education, performance, exhibition, and academic exchange. These measures aim to create new avenues for the protection and transmission of Nanfeng Nuo Dance, ensuring that its unique charm continues to thrive in contemporary society.

ebook). Petr Janeček's Spring Man: A Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture is a comprehensive study of an urban folklore character from his appearance in 1919 in Bohemia to his current form in popular culture as a symbol of Czech nationalism, the working class, and social activism. Janeček covers the origins, appearances, behaviors, and functions of Spring Man [Czech, pérák] who appeared in legends largely in urban areas throughout the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Janeček maintains that the idea of the Spring Man of folklore as a WWII resistance fighter arose from post-war literature and ideologically based scholarship and creative work and that Spring Man was morally ambiguous rather than heroic. While tales about Spring Man as a resistance fighter exist, far more common are tales in which he terrorizes the populace or attacks women. The one consistent characteristic in the tales is Spring Man's ability to escape, usually by leaping away. The reader is introduced to Spring Man in three vignettes intended to show the metamorphosis of Spring Man from monster to hero. The first, set in Prague in 1945 during the German Protectorate period, describes a boy returning home at night who sees a "dark figure… bounding down from the hill's crest with unnaturally high leaps" (1). The boy recognizes him because of his appearance: dressed in black and masked, and, most importantly, wearing shoes with springs in the soles. Frightened because he has heard stories about Spring Man's attacks on innocent people, the boy crouches next to his gate. As Spring Man passes the terrified boy, he grimaces at him and lets out a sound like the "bark of a rutting deer" (2). The second vignette describes the 1965 screening of the animated film Spring Man and the SS (1946). Children and teens are enthralled by the film and create games featuring the Czech superhero fighting the Nazis or attempt to mimic him by attaching springs to their shoes. The third vignette depicts a 2015 social action by an anonymous person purporting to be Spring Man, who criticizes the Czech nation for hypocrisy in commemorating Auschwitz while ignoring the former concentration camp in Lety which was the location of a pig farm at the time of the action. Janeček provides these vignettes as snapshots of the transformation of an urban legend into a principled superhero. The book's first chapter provides personal accounts and newspaper reports about Spring Man from 1919 through the 1970s. These legends first appeared in the mining and laboring regions of Bohemia and proliferated throughout Protectorate-era Czech lands during the later years of WWII. Many of the tales were collected by Janeček and his colleagues from informants who were children at the time the legends and rumors about Spring Man were circulating. Chapter

Folktale researchers would like to know more about the history, distribution, and meaning of certain traditional legends and their motifs—for example, about trolls or gnomes—but how do you get that international legend material, in all those different languages, together for comparative research? ISEBEL can offer a solution: the acronym stands for Intelligent Search Engine for Belief Legends. This article explains how ISEBEL came into being and how it works, and then focuses on a search for dragons in ISEBEL as a demonstration of the various problems I had to overcome in order to get results and perform my comparative research.

Turn-of-twentieth-century Sámi concepts of spirits of the dead are presented along with accounts of those exceptional individuals able to see, hear, interact with, and sometimes control them, particularly persons termed noaideslágáš, i.e., skilled in noaidi arts. Examples and analysis are drawn from the writings of Sámi author and scholar Johan Turi (1854–1936), contemporaneous accounts recorded by Norwegian folklorist Just Qvigstad (1853–1957), the fieldwork of Sámi legislator, educator, and folklore collector Isak Saba (1875–1921), and an 1886 anthology of Aanaar (Inari) Sámi folklore. Described with varying names and sometimes contradicting accounts, the spirits of the dead in Sámi culture during the early twentieth century could be used to protect or enhance the fortunes of the living, but could also play roles in situations of disease, misfortune, and interpersonal conflict. The various narratives recorded in the period reflect a complex fusion of Indigenous Sámi traditions with ideas stemming from various Christian denominations and the belief legends of non-Sámi neighbors in the Finnish, Norwegian, Russian and Swedish sides of Sápmi—the Sámi homeland. Spirits of the dead figure as potent, expectable, but sometimes unpredictable elements of daily life—beings that could help or harm, depending on how they were dealt with by those with whom they came in contact and those who could wield power over them, particularly noaiddit, Sámi ritual and healing specialists.

Abstract ISEBEL is an online database for belief legends. The acronym stands for: Intelligent Search Engine for Belief Legends. The database contains more than 70,000 traditional legends in Dutch, Frisian, Danish and German, while another 6,000 Icelandic legends are currently being added. The initiative for this project was taken several years ago by the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam, the University of Rostock/the Wossidlo Research Center and UCLA/UC Berkeley. The ambition is to create a European database, with an intelligent search function and geographical visualizations. What makes the search engine ‘intelligent’ is that it can always be searched in English, thanks to high-quality automatic translations in the background. The legend material that is brought together can also form the basis of sophisticated graphs that network themes, motifs, narrators, repertoires, and places. This article includes examples of international legends about mermaids and werewolves.

Slavic myths increasingly survive in people’s consciousness as supernatural elements or as literary characters rather than as real beliefs in their existence. Adult readers in Poland and Slovakia, for example, encounter Slavic supernatural beings in the fantasy literature book series such as Wiedźmin by Andrzej Sapkowski and Černokňažník by Juraj Červenák; however, literature cannot be expected to portray superstitions and demons in the same way as belief legends. Placing Sapkowski’s and Červenák’s works within the context of ethnographically recorded beliefs illuminates various aspects of intercultural and intertextual relationships within the literary setting. This article shows that there are several types of literary adaptation of Slavic myths: adaptation in accordance with folk beliefs, denial of superstitions, incorporating a folk myth in order to create an illusion, and using the name of a demon while also adding characteristics from other sources – especially from popular culture.

Abstract The history of international folklore research has seen several attempts to systematise the folklore texts. The (fairy) tale research has been the most productive, with nearly one hundred national tale catalogues available as well as the international tale catalogue at its fourth, improved edition. In contrast to tale and other epic genre (ballad, exemplum), the last 110 years of legend research have resulted in only a handful of books that systematised the folk heritage of the genre. Apart from a dozen of catalogues of aetiological and belief legends, until the publication of the Hungarian book series The Catalogue of Hungarian Historical Legends I‒XI, 2018, no comprehensive type- or motif index of national legends was available. This study is a review of the international pursuits in the European folklore research directed to systematise historical legends, which, to date, due to various reasons, have been only partially successful.

Abstract Narratives told by Hurricane Katrina survivors to fellow survivors in the wake of the disaster share some signal traits with belief legends as understood by Linda Dégh and Max Lüthi, as well as with hero legends as described by Wilhelm Grimm and exemplified in such ancient epics as Gilgamesh and The Iliad. Echoing contemporary belief legends, survivor narratives project a sense of purgatorial endlessness through which the overwhelming power of the storm continues unabated and the survivors remain helpless victims. At the same time, echoing legends through which godlike heroes unlearn divinity, survivor narrators depict themselves as disappearing heroes: refusing to acknowledge their own courageous acts, they identify heroism in their fellow survivors and, in the process, meld their individual identities with that of the surrounding community. In the resultant hybrid story-world, individuals gain strength only by surrendering it and can keep only what they give away. The legendary hero ultimately dissolves into the surrounding community.

This paper focuses on a specific type of archival material from the first psychiatric institution in Croatia, the Stenjevec Royal National Institute for the Insane in Zagreb, today the Vrapče University Psychiatric Hospital, dating from the period from its foundation in 1879 until 1900. More specifically, it focuses on patient narratives featuring fantastical beings, i.e., narrations about their life relying on the genre of belief legends. Based on this material, which is considered to be an important albeit atypical folkloristic corpus, the paper analyzes and interprets the status and functions of the genre of belief legends (more specifically, the memorate) in daily life narratives, personal stories and in coding affects (primarily fear). The role of belief legends is examined not only from the perspective of oral tradition and literature, but also in terms of their social and psychological position, and through the lens of psychiatric discourse of the time, which recognizes such narratives merely as symptoms of madness, translating and coding them as the language of abnormality and psychopathology.

This paper examines the use of belief legends about witches, werewolves, and fairies at open-air festivals in Croatia today. At such events, traditions based on belief legends are invented with the idea of enriching local tourism not only as a source of income but also as a medium through which they portray their local identity. Additionally, the author argues that the concept of fear plays a significant role in the entire process. Visitors face the fear invoked by supernatural concepts, but within the monitored and controlled festival environment, which this helps them overcome their fears and learn how to control them. Furthermore, the author argues that people are increasingly turning toward learning and knowing about supernatural beings of belief legends because they offer an attractive explanation for the functioning of the current world and afterlife.

Abstract This article* is about the distinct groups that practised malevolent and benevolent witchcraft in Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia in late-modern Finland according to belief legends and memorates. Placing belief legends and memorates in Mary Douglas’ tripartite classification of powers that regulate fortune and misfortune illuminates the social structure of agents who posed a threat or regulated it by means of their supranormal powers. Powers that bring misfortune dwell outside or within the community, whereas powers that bring fortune live within it but nevertheless may be ambivalent and pose a threat to its members as well. Threat towards the community was based on the concept of limited good, in other words the belief that there was a finite amount of prosperity in the world. The aim is to paint a detailed picture of the complex social structure and approaches to witchcraft in late-modern Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia.

In the Lithuanian folk medicine, classification of illnesses rests on several aspects, including separation of sicknesses affecting children and grownups, or discerning conditions caused by other untreated troubles (like fright). Based on the level of contagiousness, infectious and noncommunicable illnesses are discerned. Those considered infectious encompass a rather broad range: from epidemic (like plague and cholera) to skin complaints (warts and scabies). The article is centered on the Lithuanian folk belief (LTR 1415/119/) attributing common cold to the infectious illnesses. Since this is an unprecedented case, the research aims at finding out if common cold was considered an infectious decease in the Lithuanian folk medicine and if so, on what grounds. The author attempts establishing a potential connection between cold (Lith. sloga) and the mythical being incubus (Lith. slogutis); also her aim is finding out if common cold meant the same thing in the 19th – 20th centuries as it does in the 21st one.According to the data from the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language”, other vernacular names for the cold (viral rhinitis) are established. This prompts deeper investigation of other possible meanings of the word sloga, thus leading to further examination of its fourth meaning – namely, the mythical being slogutis.According to etiological and folk belief legends, slogutis (incubus, or nightmare), a being that tortures people in their sleep, most frequently evolves from the dead unbaptized children. This being can appear both in anthropomorphic (child, man, woman, Jew) or zoomorphic (cat, dog, hen, pig) shape. Although in terms of gender slogutis correlates with the general European notion of succubus / incubus, it does not quite correspond to it. Motivation for choosing the victim could include disregard for the rules of the community life or violation of taboos, or perpetrating some wrongs (with slogutis as a punishment). There are references to oppression by slogutis as a form of revenge. Of course, in some cases the reasons for this torture remain unclear. Surveying of folklore and international contexts elucidates the notion of slogutis as a being threatening human health and life. Further analysis reveals that experiencing such nightmares was diagnosed as a decease, therefore slogutis could have been perceived not only as a supernatural being, but also as a sickness.The last part of the article deals with the notion of cold against the background of folk medicine. Apparently, some ways of treatment imply the notion of cold as something alien: there are attempts at creating a cold-unfriendly environment and mocking at the cold in hope it would feel offended and leave the patient alone. Sometimes people resorted to active measures and employed the pars pro toto principle attempting to destruct the sickness or to pass it onto somebody else. The research revealed that the notion of cold (rhinitis) is in some cases supplemented with elements of slogutis. This enables deeper understanding of the connection between those two sicknesses. Both synonymous usage (confusion) of the names and means of treatment allow asserting that cold and incubus (sloga and slogutis) could have been perceived as two sides of the same trouble – the external and the internal one. Although the data to prove the systematic status of cold / slogutis as an infectious decease in the folk medicine is scarce, the hypothetic possibility remains, encouraging further investigation of these materials.

The aim of the article is to examine how and to what extent folk memory is reflected in the Lithuanian literary prose. The search is narrowed regionally: the analysis focuses solely on the texts related to a definite locality – Pasvalys region, the native place of the author. Three pieces of literary fiction by three authors born in this region are selected: their stories also take place in this region or somewhere nearby. The author of the article attempts recognizing the imprints of the folkloric culture left in the literary texts, which may be rather deep or barely visible. Both the local and the more universal nature of the folklore or related cultural phenomena that left these marks are taken into consideration. While reading the books, a rather true-to-life version of the traditional culture existing in the Pasvalys region opens up, along with its historically shaped notion. The attitude adopted by the writers towards the fragments of the folkloric culture that they describe is examined, as well as its contemporary reception by the people recognizing the local culture, particularly those tracing their origins in it. The folkloric landscape transferred into the fictional narrative is discussed against the background of the place legends; and the specific situation of this region, namely, its close proximity to Latvia and certain peculiarities of its landscape are also paid attention to. Interestingly enough, the old customs and beliefs (both the ones typical exclusively to the Pasvalys region and the numerous ones encountered much more broadly) are abundantly reflected in the fiction; quite frequently their modernized variants are incorporated into the texts. These include rituals practiced during the calendar festivals, e.g. sprinkling each other with water at Shrovetide, and other community and family traditions, particularly those involving rather vivid descriptions of the local wedding scenario. The local food tradition (made increasingly relevant nowadays) also earns special attention from the writers. The author of the article particularly considers relics of the worldview inherited from the folk belief legends and the renderings of the local verbal lore. The field of investigation of the folk memory readily incorporates the linguistic code representing the local peculiarities: the dialect, particularly its lexical aspect. The process of individual re-creation of proverbs or old onomatopoeic texts in order to revitalize their tradition is also noted.The analysis of the regionally limited literary discourse allows asserting the possibility of interpreting fiction as still barely utilized source of folk memory, which nevertheless quite often articulates the local folk culture almost as precisely as the registers of traditional culture compiled by specialists as result of detailed scholarly fieldwork.

The article focuses on the popular conceptualisation of a death-re- lated agent which is known in Finnish folk belief and narratives by the name churchyard-vaki (vaki means 'crowd', but also 'power' in Finnish). Natural concep- tualisation is economical and distinctions are only made when found relevant enough. Verbal descriptions of churchyard-vaki's appearance and actions to- wards people vary remarkably according to the narrative context. Rather than a clearly defined supernatural agent, churchyard-vaki is a complex of different ideas which have had enough similar features to form a single polysemous concept. The incoherence and context-bound variation of the concept imply that the status of churchyard-vaki has been instrumental rather than constitutive in belief tradition. In folk belief, churchyard-vaki usually represents the other world's intrusion into this world. As an instrument of conveying intended messages, churchyard- vaki has been used both in local gossip and traditionally formed discussions about morally charged questions. I have distinguished between three mental models, which have dominated the normative discussion about the relations between this and the other world. The question is about the ambivalence of the otherworldly impact and whether people are allowed or not to get actively in- volved with the supernatural. Belief legends about a sorcerer in the church at night make use of all the three models.

This article investigates ague (malaria) in Finnish-Karelian belief legends. The author examines the legends that tell about ague in rural Finland. The concept of belief legends is hard to define, as the legends are very heterogeneous in their form and content. As the comparative method is one of the best possibilities to reveal the characteristics of a certain culture, the author uses it in examining Finnish and Estonian ague legends. The research material, altogether 1000 text units, originates from Finnish and Estonian Folklore Archives. Typically, in Finnish-Karelian tradition ague was present in the form of a man. The disease-spirit had an ability to transform, while it entered a human body. During the day it called its victim in a familiar voice. It was possible to imprison the transformed ague spirit, or take it on a horse to a farm nearby. The author suggests that these legends shared the information about the aetiology of ague disease. Furthermore, these legends enabled to acquire basic knowledge about the causes and symptoms of the disease, also providing guidance on how to avoid and defeat it. After ague had become eradicated as a dangerous disease, the legends were told more due to their entertaining function.

In this article, the author argues against the scholarly tendency to consider entertaining belief legends rather fictive than belonging to the popular world view. Belief tradition includes mental images that are applicable as metaphors, as well as explanations of real-life events; their applicability is situation-bound. The author dwells upon Finnish archived versions of the legend Church service for the dead. The legend type includes “unbelievable” motifs but is occasionally used as an explanation for authentic experiences as well. The narrative features of the stories, e.g., human experientiality, causality, and coherence as building blocks of credibility are analyzed. Through narrative means, the narrative is structured as a coherent whole, which is plausible in its own taleworld. Simultaneously, causal links are created to bring the taleworld as near as possible to the listeners’ own life-world. Both the narrativity and the social and cultural relevance of the messages conveyed by the legend have made it popular. Consequently, the recurrence of the motifs, which clearly belong to the story rather than to folk belief (such as the scarf left to the dead and torn by them), has given them validity even outside the legend type.

Dirges have been meaningful to lamenters for several reasons. Culture-bound, religious explanations have functioned as a conscious motivation for performing dirges and have constituted a part of the local belief system. On an unconscious, psychic level dirges respond to the reactions of the intra-psychic mourning process: denial of loss, anger towards the deceased, and self-reproach. Ingrian lamenters make concrete and impossible requests (rise up, answer me, come and feed your children!) of the deceased - requests which would be improper in any other context than ritual (e.g. in belief legends). As traditional but variable verses, these requests function cathartically as a legitimate way of expressing emotions and unloading anxiety. Whereas Western psychoanalysis has emphasized completing the mourning process by a total decathexis from the deceased, lament culture en- courages keeping up ties with the significant dead. The ritual frame enables a close and confiding communication without fear.

Including this one, Jan Brunvand is the author of ten compilations of urban legends spanning more than 20 years, a syndicated column, and numerous papers. His name is now so closely associated with "urban legend" that anybody else working in the field feels compelled to use a different term to describe what s/he does—"modern legend," "belief legend," or "contemporary legend," which is the Sheffield school's preferred term. Brunvand is responsible for bringing countless "new" urban legends to scholars' attention, for putting the term "urban legend" into the vocabulary of journalists and others working in the media, and for familiarizing the world in general with the genre. His industry is as prodigious as his success, and his influence cannot be overestimated.