Seal (of the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia) has put together an interesting if sporadic collection of folk heroes. He refers to it as a "representative collection of legendary, historical, and magical heroes from many of the world's extensive folklores." South and Central America receive very little coverage. Polynesia and Melanesia are barely covered. Europe, North America, China, Japan, and select parts of Africa are covered, as are both settler and Aboriginal Australia.
After a long introduction that surveys both the nature of the folk hero and the author's criteria for inclusion and exclusion, the work itself is in alphabetical order. There are liberal see references between variant forms of names. Entries range from a paragraph to several two-columned pages (e.g., Culture heroes; James, Jesse; Snow White ). Each entry has a list of related entries and a list of references and further reading. Black-and-white illustrations are scattered throughout the text.
Folk heroes are those "who have received celebration in one or more forms of folkloric expression and practice--in folktales, folk songs, folk customs, folk speech, and the other informal genres of everyday life." They include real people whose lives were large enough to have a fantastic component to them, like Davy Crockett, or whose deaths made publicity machines crank out stories about them, like Ned Kelly. Outlaws, tricksters, heroes and heroines of fairy tales and story cycles, numbskulls, and monsters are included. There are some puzzling assertions. In the Heroes of strug gle entry, Helen Gurley Brown is identified as an "occupational" hero from American labor lore, along with Joe Hill.
Following the entries are an "Index of Heroic Types," a "Country/Culture Index," and a "Chronology of Folk Heroes" as well as a general index. There is an extensive bibliography besides the references given at the end of each entry.
Although many of the same topics are covered in other reference books on folklore,
Encyclopedia of Folk Heroes includes a number of figures not easily found elsewhere. Larger public and academic libraries with folklore collections may find it useful.
