D. S. Brewer/Rowman & Littlefield for the Folklore Society. Ipswich, 1975. First Edition. Green cloth, gilt. 120pp including notes, bibliography and index. Slight speckling to Page Edges and some age related tanning to End papers. Otherwise, clean, clear text in tightly bound volume. DJ in very good condition with minimal evidence of shelf wear and handling. On or two small (2mm or less) tears at Top of DJ , Spine of DJ sunned a little. Cambridge. With classified indexes to tale types and motifs. Simpson's excellent translations of Icelandic folktakes offer to anthropologists an easily accessible source which preserves the structure and terms of the original text as much as possible. Not only are these tales presented in perfectly readable English, but Simpson has taken care to see that her rendition is grammatically parallel to the Icelandic texts. This is no easy task as is made apparent in the quality of theท translation by Benedik ( I Loftur the Magician') which is included in this selection. Together with Simpson's book, Icelandic Folktales and Legends .(1973), these translations of Icelandic folktales are easily the most reliable that have yet appeared. The majority of the pieces are taken from Jon Arnason's collection of tales about individual magicians (einstakir galdramenn). although two tales are from Olafur Davisson'sท(1945) and three were contributed by Benedikz.; The contents of the manuscript which were told to him in the 1930's. Thus we are presented with a record of 200 years of tales about these magicians, the majority of whom lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although the greatest of them all,\nSmundur the Wise, lived from 1056-1133. Simpson has translated Jon Arnason's notes and the sources he cited for the tales, supplementing these notes with her own comments on the motifs which appear. Her notes provide an excellent guide to further readings on the subject, both in English and in Icelandic.
+
