Cuentos populares británicos

by Katharine M. Briggs, Juan Antonio Molina Foix (Translator)

Esta recopilación de Katharine M. Briggs, la más importante folclorista de las islas británicas, es la más completa de la larga tradición que este género tiene en su país. Mediante una amplia documentación y una cuidada introducción de cada uno de sus apartados, la recopiladora nos conduce por el apasionante mundo de las tradiciones populares, la narración oral, las leyendas, las fábulas, los cuentos de encantamiento, los de humor y toda una serie de variantes que constituye esa otra historia que no aparece en los tratados, pero que guarda la memoria viva de la fantasía de los pueblos. En esta antología encontraremos el origen de muchos de los cuentos tradicionales más conocidos y sus variantes de épocas posteriores, y recuperaremos las voces de nuestra infancia.

Genres: Folklore, Nonfiction, Folk Tales, History, Classics, Fairy Tales, Literature

381 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Early Life Katharine Briggs was born in Hampstead, London in 1898, and was the eldest of three sisters. The Briggs family, originally from Yorkshire, had built up a fortune in the 18th and 19th centuries through coal mining and owned a large colliery in Normanton, West Yorkshire. With such enormous wealth, Katharine and her family were able to live in luxury with little need to work. Briggs's father Ernest was often unwell and divided his time between leafy Hampstead and the clear air of Scotland. He was a watercolourist and would often take his children with him when he went to paint the landscape. An imaginative storyteller, he loved to tell his children tales and legends; these would have a great impact on the young Katharine, becoming her passion in later life. When Briggs was 12 her father had Dalbeathie House built in Perthshire and the family moved permanently to Scotland; however, tragedy struck when he died two years later. Briggs and her two sisters, Winifred and Elspeth, developed a close bond with their mother, Mary, after this - all living together for almost fifty years. As Briggs and her sisters grew older their main passion was for amateur dramatics. They wrote and performed their own plays at their home and Briggs would pursue her interest in theatre throughout her education. After leaving school she attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, graduating with a BA in 1918 and an MA in 1926. She specialised in the study of traditional folk tales and 17th-century English history.

The Folklorist Briggs continued her studies largely as a hobby, while living with her sisters and mother in Burford, Oxfordshire. She collected together traditional stories from across the country and the wider world, but did not publish them yet. Together she and her sisters performed in plays with local amateur dramatics groups and Briggs wrote historical novels set during the Civil War (also unpublished). When the Second World War started Briggs joined the WAAF and later taught at a school for the children of Polish refugees. After the war Briggs threw herself into her folklore studies, completing her PhD on the use of folklore in 17th-century literature. In 1954, the first Katharine Briggs book was published, titled The Personnel of Fairyland, a guide to the folklore of Great Britain. This was followed by Hobberdy Dick (1955), a children's story about a hobgoblin in Puritan England. Though these books brought a small amount of interest, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s, following the deaths of her sisters and mother, that Briggs became a renowned folklorist. In 1963 she published another children's book, Kate Crackernuts, and became involved with the Folklore Society of the UK, later being elected as its president in 1967. Now a preeminent expert on fairy stories and folklore, she began to lecture across the country and by the 1970s she had been invited to give lectures in the United States and was regularly interviewed on television. In 1971 she published her masterpiece, the four-volume A Dictionary of Folk-Tales in the English Language. This work remains the definitive collection of British folk stories, becoming a vital resource for writers, academics and storytellers. Katharine Briggs died suddenly at the age of 82 on 15th October 1980. At the time of her death she had been working on a memoir of her childhood days in Scotland and Hampstead, where her love of folklore began.

Information taken from http://www.foliosociety.com/author/ka...

Reviews

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly entertaining introduction to British folklore, both practical and whimsical. Many of the tales are preserved in their original dialects and all cry out to be read aloud and shared. Dip in or read each sampling chapter by chapter - each tale has its individual charm - an absolute delight of originality and quirkiness.

[Pete Bangs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briggs is the acknowledged queen of British Folk tale study and this small sampling of the stories she collected is a superb introduction to the subject. Ranging from the out and out comic to the psychologically terrifying these tales truly have something for every taste.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been working my way recently through some of the wonderful books I have in my personal library. British Folk Tales, edited by Katharine Briggs, is one of several folk and fairy tale collections I inherited from my father. (Another is Great Swedish Fairy Tales, edited by Elsa Olenius, which I reviewed last summer.)

Briggs (1898–1980) was a renowned folklorist and Oxford scholar. This collection is divided into 18 parts: (1) Fables and Exempla, (2) Fairy Tales, (3) Jocular Tales, (4) Novelle, (5) Nursery Tales, (6) Black Dogs, (7) Bogies, (8) Devils, (9) Dragons, (10) Fairies, (11) Ghosts, (12) Giants, (13) Historical Traditions, (14) Local Legends, (15) Saints, (16) The Supernatural, (17) Witches, and (18) Miscellaneous Legends. Each section begins with an introduction that explains the types of stories included in the category.

A small number of the entries are transcriptions of oral accounts of stories passed down by a family member or friend. I have a good eye and ear for dialect, but a few of these transcribed accounts went right over my head. ;) ...Which is fine. No complaints here. I love the fact that these have been included.

Most of the stories range in length from a paragraph or two to a page or two; a few are several pages long. There's a mix here of gentle and dark tales. Among the legends and historical traditions -- tales that may or may not have some basis in fact -- there are a few I very much hope are true ("The Peddlar of Swaffham," for example), and one or two that I very, very much pray are not.

P.S. A detailed biography of Katharine Briggs can be found on this page: https://www.fembio.org/english/biogra....

[Gabriel Clarke]

Marvellous. Folklore scholarship can be alarmingly dry and reductive but this delightful collection let’s not only the tales but the voices of the tellers speak for themselves. Briggs (what a wonderful, no-nonsense name for a folklorist) was the Alan Lomax of British oral literature.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though not exhaustive in its content, Briggs' collection of folktales and legends is quite thorough in its representation of the wealth and variety of British folklore. Though there are a couple sections missing; I should have liked to see some riddles, or lullabies, or other folk songs, etc. But there are many categories as it is, and the raw and plain character of the tales, often told with original dialects preserved, is fascinating and delightful. Briggs is a real folklorist. She knows and understands her material, but does not bog down the reader with technical jargon, and has a passion for folklore for its own sake, apart from its academic interest. The sections included are: Fables, Fairy Tales, Jocular Tales, Novelle (defined as naturalistic fairy tales), Nursery Tales, Black Dogs, Bogies, Devils, Dragons, Fairies, Ghosts, Giants, Historical Traditions, Local Legends, Saints, The Supernatural, Witches, and Miscellaneous Legends.

[Gheeta · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent compendium of various types of British folklore. The editor includes a few examples of each style and talks about their origins and similarities found throughout the British Isles and beyond.