Popular Romances of the West of England by Robert Hunt

Description

Popular Romances of the West of England is a book by Robert Hunt, first published in 1865. It collects a wide-ranging anthology of Cornish folk-lore, drolls, traditions and superstitions — including legends of saints and holy wells, Arthurian tales, miners’ and fishermen’s lore, witches, mermaids, death omens and local customs. Written in the Victorian antiquarian mode, Hunt assembles oral narratives, ballads and local beliefs with an eye to preservation; the result reads both as a catalogue of regional belief and as a portrait of Cornwall’s popular imagination in the nineteenth century. Valuable to students of folklore and to readers who favour the rural and the archaic, the book helped fix many local tales in print at a time when oral tradition was changing rapidly. Its chapters — organised by topic rather than by locality — make it a convenient reference for researchers and enthusiasts looking for Cornish motifs and vernacular practices, and the work has been repeatedly reprinted and digitised, remaining a frequently cited source for Cornwall’s popular legends.

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