Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland Within This Century

by James Napier

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Genres: Nonfiction, Folklore

132 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1879

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this at work when trying to see what we had for books to do the Halloween blog about. It stated the beginning that superstition was anything that wasn't the true belief of Christianity. But after that it tended to mostly ignore preaching. The start had some very interesting fairy beliefs, but they weren't gone into as much detail as I hoped. Still there was a lot of interesting beliefs and practices that got mentioned and it would be a lovely source book for someone wanting to write a spooky, magical story.

[Jena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating collection of the superstitions of Scotland in the 19th century. It was especially interesting to read this from the perspective of one who lived in that time period. This book covers beliefs regarding marriage, birth, death, festivals, plants, animals, and miscellaneous folklore of the time.

[James Crawford · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first interesting thing about this book is that it was published in 1879 which means it will give us a different take on things than books written in the present day do.

The author describes superstition as a 'degrading influence on society.' The tone of the superstitious mind is 'weak and foolish.' Further, the author goes on to say that these superstitious beliefs and practices are 'focused on erroneous ideas of God and nature.'

What to do? "...search Nature and Revelation for correct views of God and his method of working.' Thus, it is obvious that the author is taking a strong religious stance on the nature of superstition which means he is looking at it from a totally different viewpoint than almost all authors of the present day.

He says that the things taught by Jesus is not the things taught by Protestant or Catholic religions. This means that this is heathen and Christian ideas that are mixed come into play. He says that basically anyone who disagreed with the dogmatic views of the Church were considered enemies of the church.

His negative view of established religion is shown in '...as the Church became powerful she became more repressive and opposed all inquiry which appeared to lead to conclusions different from those promulgated by her.' He adds 'The church has became a great conservator of superstition.'

So rather than trying to establish just what superstition is, what causes it, where it comes from, what, if any, part of it has at least some basis in fact is pretty much forgotten in this approach.

[Todd Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In depth and very interesting read. Covered a lot ground on the topic.

Lots of weird beliefs back in the day which we can still see them remnants today.

[A.R. Jarvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an interesting read. It contains many different tidbits of Scottish folk-lore and superstitions, including history and reasons for some superstitions that are still around today (how 4-leaf clovers are lucky, what sort of bad luck breaking a mirror brings, ect).

Honestly, as a reader, I found that the actual writing of the book was a bit dull. It was good to skim, just dry to read all in one go, especially when the author meandered off-topic (though sometimes that was interesting, too). Then again, as a writer (or at least a collector of ideas), I found this to be fascinating stuff, and would love to use some of the information contained herein in world-building for a fantasy setting.