medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

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>In particular, I'd like to know more about the "secondary etiological 
>legends" you mentioned.

You might begin with the following article: J.C. Beck, “The White Lady of 
Great Britain and Ireland,” Folklore 81, 1970, pp. 292-306. Though not 
recent, it does a good job of describing the phenomenon and how it fits into 
folklore and other remains.

Another related topic is the banshee and the classic work is by Patricia 
Lysaght, The Banshee: The Irish Death Messenger, Roberts Rinehart 
Publishers, Boulder, Col., 1986. A shorter version is Patricia Lysaght, 
“Aspects of the Earth-Goddess in Traditions of the Banshee” in Billington, 
S., Green, M., eds., The Concept of the Goddess. However, the article 
particularizes to a degree you probably wouldn't find helpful. The 
book-length treatment of the subject examines all the aspects of the visions 
of the banshee and related figures. I stress: I'm not suggesting that your 
moving statues are the same as the banshee experiences; they're almost 
certainly closer to the "white ladies" but white ladies and banshee stories 
are related to the earlier goddess of the land figure (as Lusaght discusses 
in her article, above, and as Ma/ire Herbert discusses from a different 
direction in an article also in _The Concept of the Goddess_). A variation 
on the theme is the Gaelic (Irish, Scots, Manx) figure of the Cailleach 
Bhearre on which there is an extensive literature but a good intorduction is 
O Grualaoich, Gearoid. "Non-sovereignty Queen Aspects of the Otherworld 
Female in Irish Hag Legends: The Case of the Cailleach Bhearra." Bealoideas: 
The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society 62-63 (1994-95), 147-162. You 
probably should also explore the relationship of the Melusine legend to 
Celtic sources. There is an extensive literature on ths subject. So I 
suggest that you consult the searchable on-line database at:

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/celtic/csanasearch.html

I'm not sure that any of my recommendations carry weight on this list, so 
I'll mention that the bibliography is compiled under the direction fo 
Professor Joseph Falaky Nagy at UCLA.

Search on folklore or Melusin (leave off the final "e" because some titles 
use Melusina).

>Saillens mentions many of the similarities that you referred to between 
>antique beliefs and those of the Middle Ages, and he also brings up 
>"Celtic" practice, as well.

Excuse me, but one of my buttons was just pushed. There is no such thing as 
"Celtic practice." There are Irish, Welsh, Breton, Scots, Cornish, Manx, and 
earlier British, Pictish, Gaulish, Galatians, Celtiberian, and other 
practiceS (plural). They are similar in some ways and unique in others. 
There is not and never was such a thing as a monolithic, unchanging "Celtic" 
culture. In France, the situation is complex because there are multiple 
layers of Celtic traditions: below the Frankish and Roman layers is the 
Gaulish (which consisted of many different tribes/peoples who fought each 
other and moved back and forth across the land) and in Brittany, there's the 
layer of British-became-Breton (NOTE: by "British" I mean what became 
Cornish and Welsh plus groups that assimilated). All of France has one broad 
type of Celtic heritage--the Gaulish, in all its varieties--but not all of 
France has the British heritage of Brittany. The Breton traditions of white 
ladies seem quite similar to those of Britain, especially Wales, but that 
heritage should not be assumed for all places in France.

>But he then tries to explain these similarities by positing,
>quite straightforwardly, the survival of pre-Christian beliefs into
>the Middle Ages (or with your examples, into almost the present),
>which I can't help thinking needs a bit of nuancing, as a theory, to
>be very helpful.

Hence my repeating the necessity of understanding the language and symbols 
people use. It also helps to understand the native cosmology as opposed to 
the Greco-Roman version that is constantly assumed to underlie all folklore 
in formerly Celtic regions.

Francine Nicholson, M.A.

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