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A review by kalira
Discovering the Folklore of Birds and Beasts by Venetia Newall
1.0
Firstly: no fault of the book itself but I see it described as folklore worldwide (and had some dubious reactions, because it's quite a small book for such a broad topic), and it is definitely in Britain, specifically. (Some mentions of related things in Europe - mostly Scandinavian, Norse, or 'northern' by which she means 'Norse', which are mostly wrong - a few mentioning other places - Asia, Africa, the Americas. She closes with Zebra, which she points out certainly has no British folklore associated, but it's the perfect one to end on, so she quotes an African piece of folklore. Supposedly. It's the only one in the entire book that is not relating to something from the British Isles.)
Secondly: it is mainly not so much folklore as it is superstitions - many things including beliefs and actions, such as historical medical practises and the like. There are very, very few actual folklore stories or beliefs.
Relatedly: there is a lot of animal death. Tons of it. As I would expect from a book focusing on historical medical practises and similar, but a) I didn't know this was, and b) it's . . . a lot even for that.
There are also not a few items that I happen to know from other research are incorrectly reported here - whether that knowledge has been refined in the decades since this book was written or was demonstrably known to be incorrect even in the '70s I do not know. (There are also a number of superstitions repeated identically, say, across half a dozen different bird species - presumably because of variation across regions and time passing, but should then be treated as related or at least mentioned as such, not handled as though they are entirely separate.)
The author occasionally comments on a belief being "still current" - some of them I gave a side-eye but I certainly wouldn't know enough to dispute, fair enough. Some of them I feel fairly certain are not - for example, I doubt people in Britain in the '70s were, say, regularly dosing their children with the ashes of a songbird mixed with honey to cure a cough.
The section on the Cat is the longest in the book (the Wren and the Wolf are the runners-up) and save for one (incorrect) bit at the beginning referring to Egypt, almost the entire several pages are a litany of horrible ways to kill cats and use their corpses. It is unrelentingly negative and it is the only animal in the book that has more than a brief entry that is so. Even the wolf is not so bad and has several positive things mentioned, but not so much with the cat. I know there are positive superstitions from the British Isles relating to cats, but either the author did not or she simply dislikes them.
Secondly: it is mainly not so much folklore as it is superstitions - many things including beliefs and actions, such as historical medical practises and the like. There are very, very few actual folklore stories or beliefs.
Relatedly: there is a lot of animal death. Tons of it. As I would expect from a book focusing on historical medical practises and similar, but a) I didn't know this was, and b) it's . . . a lot even for that.
There are also not a few items that I happen to know from other research are incorrectly reported here - whether that knowledge has been refined in the decades since this book was written or was demonstrably known to be incorrect even in the '70s I do not know. (There are also a number of superstitions repeated identically, say, across half a dozen different bird species - presumably because of variation across regions and time passing, but should then be treated as related or at least mentioned as such, not handled as though they are entirely separate.)
The author occasionally comments on a belief being "still current" - some of them I gave a side-eye but I certainly wouldn't know enough to dispute, fair enough. Some of them I feel fairly certain are not - for example, I doubt people in Britain in the '70s were, say, regularly dosing their children with the ashes of a songbird mixed with honey to cure a cough.
The section on the Cat is the longest in the book (the Wren and the Wolf are the runners-up) and save for one (incorrect) bit at the beginning referring to Egypt, almost the entire several pages are a litany of horrible ways to kill cats and use their corpses. It is unrelentingly negative and it is the only animal in the book that has more than a brief entry that is so. Even the wolf is not so bad and has several positive things mentioned, but not so much with the cat. I know there are positive superstitions from the British Isles relating to cats, but either the author did not or she simply dislikes them.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death