The Folkways of Brazil

York Public Library, seemingly represents the ideas of the compiler Rex Gorham, who has spent some twenty years in Brazil as representative of an American firm.In the Introduction and in the annotated List the compiler implicitly and explicitly states that only Portuguese, Negro, and Indian cultures (in that order of importance) contributed to modern Brazilian folkways.No allowance is made for sixteenth-century French and seventeenth-century Dutch influences along the Atlantic seaboard, nor for Spanish influences that have been exerted for some four centuries in the Plata, Amazon, and Orinoco regions.Mr. Gorham, or Mr. Brown, goes on to state in the Introduction, that until recently little folkloristic research was carried out in Brazil because the urge towards such studies was not strong among Portuguese and Brazilians.From various statements in the Introduction the reader learns that (1) "the list makes no claim to completeness.It is ample for the general student . . .(2) the "compilation attempts to explain the social psychology of the larger mass of Brazilians living along the Atlantic seaboard, particularly in the capital city of Rio de Janeiro, the great industrial metropolis of S. Paulo, and the fairly densely populated regions which lie back of those two centers and in the southern states";(3) "The rich foklore of the Amazon is not included."An examination of the citations indicates that it is indeed far from complete.Seemingly the compiler belongs to that school which would restrict folklore to the "culture of the backward elements in civilized societies," and would virtually exclude "folklore" of the Indians, since very few ethnographies of Indian groups in Brazil are cited.Furthermore, folkways or folklore apparently is interpreted in a very restricted earlier sense because such fields as folk medicine and ethnobiology, popular arts and crafts, costume

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