Current Superstitions Part 55

VOL. IV. CURRENT SUPERSt.i.tIONS.

Collected from the Oral Tradition of English-speaking Folk. Edited by f.a.n.n.y D. BERGEN. With Notes, and an Introduction by WILLIAM WELLS NEWELL.

1896. Pp. vi., 161.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

THE AMERICAN FOLK-LORE SOCIETY was organized January 4, 1888, for the collection and publication of the folk-lore and mythology of the American continent.

The Society holds annual meetings, at which reports are received and papers read.

The members.h.i.+p fee is three dollars, payable on the 1st of January in each year.

Members are ent.i.tled to receive the Journal of American Folk-Lore, a periodical appearing quarterly, and of which eight volumes have already been issued, each volume containing about three hundred and fifty octavo pages. The Journal is published for the Society by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York.

The work of the Society includes publication and research in regard to the religious ceremonies, ethical conditions, mythology, and oral literature of Indian tribes; collection of the traditions of stocks existing in a relatively primitive state, and the collation of these with correct accounts of survivals among civilized tribes; gathering of the almost wholly unrecorded usages and beliefs of Central and South American races; the comparison of aboriginal American material with European and Asiatic conceptions, myths, and customs; a study of survivals among American negroes, including their traditional inheritance from Africa, and its modification in this Continent; preservation of the abundant folk-lore of the French and Spanish regions of North America; record of the oral traditions of the English-speaking population, and description of communities now or lately existing under isolated conditions.

The publication of the Memoirs cannot be met from the regular fees of the Society, but is rendered possible by annual contributions to the Publication Fund, of ten dollars, for such time as individual subscribers may be pleased to continue such subscription.

Subscribers are enrolled as members of the Society, and receive all its publications, issued after the date of subscription, including the Journal and Memoirs.

A list of Annual Subscribers is printed in the Journal, and in each volume of the Memoirs, so long as subscription continues.

Persons willing to a.s.sist in this work of publication, by the annual payment, during such time as they may please, of ten dollars (which sum, it will be understood, includes the annual members.h.i.+p fee of the Society), are requested to remit their subscriptions to the Treasurer, John H. Hinton, M.D., No. 41 West 32d St., New York, N.Y.