William Alexander Clouston (1843–96), folklorist

Introduction and bibliography

Bibliographic Data

ID8935328
AuthorsGareth Whittaker (corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume115
Issue3
Pages348-362
Publication date2004-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFolklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-587X • E-ISSN: 1469-8315
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0015587042000284329
OpenAlexW1980803666
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited6

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Dorson's major treatment of Clouston is in his The British Folklorists (Dorson Citation1968a, 257–65), where he is firmly in the "Great Team." Nevertheless, although Clouston had been in Dorson's "Team" since 1951. when unaccountably he was "English" and "resided in Edinburgh" (Dorson Citation1951, 1 and 4), and appeared in it again in 1961 (Dorson Citation1961, 17), by 1968, despite his honoured place in The British Folklorists, his position on the "Team" had already become tenuous (Dorson Citation1968b, 1–23). By 1976 Clouston had definitely been relegated (Dorson Citation1976, 109), possibly under pressure from the then new wave of American folklorists (e.g. Goldstein, Ben‐Amos and Abrahams), who would probably have regarded Clouston's labours as pointless comparativism; thereafter the "Team" was recognised as having only five members (Dorson Citation1978, 786; Citation1980, 145–56). The "Obituary" for William A. Clouston appears in the list of works by Edwin Sidney Hartland based on his own record published in Folklore 37 (1926): 185. See also Dorson (Citation1968a, 204). National Library of Scotland, MS 4482. In these letters Clouston pressed for a deal involving a sale of copyright, one‐half of the cash to be paid to him immediately and the remainder to be paid six months later rather than a lump sum on publication, plus five shillings per copy for every copy in excess of six hundred sold. At the end of six months he was again in financial straits and repeatedly wrote for his money, finally (10 November 1886) resorting to a telegram saying he must have a cheque that night. The only book that I am aware of that has attempted to do something similar is the delightful Thrice Told Tales. Folktales from Three Continents edited by Kenneth S. Goldstein and Dan Ben‐Amos (Goldstein and Ben‐Amos Citation1970). This work blends popular and scholarly approaches in comparing three versions of four tale types (Cinderella [Types 520 and 510A]; The Tarbaby and the Rabbit [Type 175]; The Magician and His Pupil [Type 325]; Quest for a Vanished Princess [Type 310A]), one each from Europe, Asia and Africa. But the editors' claim to be unique and their failure to even mention Clouston's Popular Tales and Fictions is justified only on the basis of their including "complete" texts and their emphasis on differences rather than similarities in the versions from each tradition area. In 1892 Clouston politely chides Jacobs in return: "Mr. Jacobs, ... In his charming book, Celtic Fairy Tales, remarks that 'a similar story is found in some versions of "The Forty Vazírs" and in the "Turkish Tales",' as if these were the names of different works: as I have already stated (pp. 191, 192), the Contes Turcs of Petis de la Croix are a partial French rendering of the Turkish Qirq Vazír" (Clouston Citation1892, 556). Unfortunately an otherwise excellent and long‐required new edition is marred by a failure to repaginate properly and the introduction of several misprints not in the original edition, while failing to correct a misprint ("Owyll" instead of Pwyll": see Clouston Citation1887, vol. I, 429; Goldberg Citation2002, 219) pointed out by a reviewer in 1887 in anticipation of a second edition! (The Athenaeum 1887, 542)

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Folklore · Folkloristics · Literature · Obituary · Classics · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Historical Studies of British Isles · History

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