The Boggart Sourcebook

Comprising three parts, this book is a companion volume to The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-Names and Dialect. Part one, ‘Boggart Ephemera’, is a selection of about 40,000 words of nineteenth-century boggart writing (particularly material that is difficult to find in libraries). Part two presents a catalogue of ‘Boggart Names’ (place-names and personal names, totalling over 10,000 words). Finally, part three contains the entire ‘Boggart Census’ – a compendium of ground-breaking grassroots research. This census includes more than a thousand responses, totalling some 80,000 words, from older respondents in the north-west of England, to the question: ‘What is a boggart?’ The Boggart Sourcebook will be of interest to folklorists, historians and dialect scholars. It provides the three corpora on which the innovative monograph, The Boggart, is based.

The Boggart

The boggart was a much-feared, little-studied supernatural being from the north of England. Against the odds, it survives today, whether in place-names or in works of fantasy literature – not least Harry Potter. Centring on this mercurial and mysterious figure, The Boggart pioneers two methods for collecting folklore: first, the use of hundreds of thousands of words on the boggart from digitised ephemera; second, about 1,100 contemporary boggart memories that derive from social media surveys and personal interviews relating to the interwar and postwar years. Through a radical combination of this new information and an interdisciplinary approach – involving dialectology, folklore, Victorian history, supernatural history, oral history, place-name studies, sociology and more – it is possible to reconstruct boggart beliefs, experiences and tales. The boggart was not, as we have been led to believe, a ‘goblin’. Rather, this was a much more general term encompassing all solitary, and often ambivalent, supernatural beings, from killer mermaids to headless phantoms to shape-changing ghouls. In the same period that boggart beliefs were dying, folklorists continuously misrepresented the boggart and how the modern fantasy version was born of these misunderstandings. As well as offering a fresh reading of a deep seam of folklore, this book showcases some of the ways in which harnessing recent advances in digitization can offer rich and compelling rewards.

Place Names in Colophons and Notes of Yemeni Manuscripts

This article points to some geographical and historical conditions of scholarship and manuscript culture in Zaydi Yemen. The place of copying is only sporadically given in the colophons of Arabic manuscripts. This is confirmed by a systematic investigation into the catalogues of the Berlin collection presented here. In particular, this article discusses the presence of place names in the colophons and notes of Yemeni manuscripts, based on an examination of 750 volumes held in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. It reveals that manuscripts from the Zaydi tradition were copied in numerous locations, but also shows the relevance of other places with respect to the transmission of knowledge. The wide range of fifty villages and smaller towns that appear in the colophons is significant for Yemen and can be explained by the long tradition of Zaydi scholars settling in the tribal territory in villages (qarya) or settlements called hijra (pl. hijar). The result remains surprising in so far as older catalogues of Yemeni manuscripts seem to be erratic and inconsistent in providing information on places of copying.

To the Question of Neuter Gender Toponyms’ Declention Ending on -ovo/-evo, -ino/-yno

The present paper deals with the issue concerning neuter gender toponyms’ declension ending on -ovo/-evo, -ino/-yno in Russian language. Until the 20th century, these place names had been changed in cases steadily; in the middle of the century, a tendency outlined not to decline these toponyms despite the valid rule. The researchers highlight three reasons for distribution of this phenomenon: the professional speech of military men and topographers, the influence of non-Slavic indeclinable neuter gender toponyms, the attempt to eliminate the possible confusion of neuter and masculine nouns that have the same basis. The author estimates the reliability of the reasons that toponyms on -ovo/-evo, -ino/-yno appeared in indeclinable form, determines the possibility of these reasons to influence on deviation from the normative practice and makes an independent research based on available material. The main factor that strongly fastened in practice the non-declension of toponyms on -ovo/-evo, -ino/-yno is the society in which Russian language functioned for the most of 20th century. That was the totalitarian period with its cult of a simple man and orientation on the least educated; this circumstance could not but play in favour for distribution of multiple deviations from the literary norm. In addition, the appearance of numerous toponyms on -ovo/-evo, -ino/-yno formed from the surnames of the communist chiefs (Stalino, Lenino, Kalinino, Ulyanovo, Kuybyshevo, etc.), in indirect cases, created a dangerous analogy with the Soviet leaders, which could contribute in expansion of non-declension.

The Meaning of Name a Place in Perspective Java Migrant Custom in Lampung, Indonesia

Every place on earth has a name. The origin of place names generally has different backgrounds, stories, and histories. Generally, it depends on who gave the name of the place. There is a meaning and purpose behind the naming. This study aims to determine the socio-cultural ecological life of the community in an area and analyze the meaning contained in the socio-cultural context. This qualitative research is sourced from 26 informants. In addition to interviews, this research relies on observation and documentation studies to obtain a comprehensive toponym. This research was conducted at Gedong Tataan. Gedong Tataan is an area where is located that shows the history of transmigration in Lampung during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia. The results of this study indicate that the naming of Gedong Tataan by the Javanese is influenced by the physical aspects of the area based on the socio-cultural aspect of Java. This study concludes that all areas inhabited by Javanese transmigrants in Lampung have a toponym according to the origin of the population from Java, including the use of the Javanese language for daily communication. This behavior belongs to the realm of cultural preservation and it still thrives in migration and transmigration areas.