A. VAN DER ZEIJDEN
Traditie en Folklore: pleidooi voor een herwaardering en een nieuw leven van twee oude begrippen
Summary: Tradition and folklore. A plea for a revaluation and a new life of two old concepts
Tradition and folklore are concepts preferably avoided by serious scientists. These concepts are too much emotionally charged with the old prejudices about the supposed Germanic continuity of “traditional” popular culture. In this article I plead for a revaluation and a reintroduction of both concepts in the scientific discourse. It is a return to the origin of folklore with the aim of giving it a character of its own, and choose it, just as in the initial period, as a study-matter for investigating the ancient subject of folklore, i.e. the traditional folklore in present-day society. It is also a plea to approach in a more positive way the field of activity.
Folklorists have both these concepts ever since used for the activities of their own, namely practising, the study of folklore. And so they have bridged the gap between theory and practice, between scientific investigation and field work.
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D. CALLEWAERT
Lachen en spotten in het West-Vlaams Klankarchief
Summary: Laughing and Mocking
A series of tapes with interviews, songs and rhymes were recorded in West-Flanders between 1956 and 1975 by the folklorist Magda Cafmaeyer and have recently been digitalized and archived by the author into 37 CDs (:948 tracks or records). The ‘West-Vlaams Klankarchief’ provides a better understanding of social relations and customs in the last century. A number of songs and rhymes in the collection prove to be a perfect vehicle to ridicule e.g. political opponents, respectable institutions, outsiders and minority groups (well-to-do, celibate, single,…).
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W.L. BRAEKMAN
Een ‘Konstboecxken’ met een spotrecept door een ‘ongeleerden sottoer’ (ca. 1595)
Summary: A ‘Konstboecxken’ with a mock recipe by an unlearned, foolish physician
An anonymous booklet of fifty octavo-sized pages, lavishly illustrated with seventeen woodcuts, has not yet attracted any attention. The unique copy of this ‘kunstboecxken’, now in the Royal Library in The Hague, was printed by Peter Warnesoen at Campen about 1595.
Its content consists mainly of an unrecorded reprint of the well-known and extremely popular Sack der Consten, which has been reprinted many times since 1528, the year of its first known publication. In addition we find here seventeen recipes not occurring in any other edition of the Sack.
Its most important part, however, is an extensive pseudo-recipe cast in the form of a letter (a missive), sent by a “sottoer”, a pun on sot (fool) and doctoer or dokter (physician) to an unnamed friend afflicted with a strange illness which is not specified.
Mock medical recipes are as rare in Dutch as they are in other languages. The present paper gives a brief survey of the known related texts up to the eighteenth century. The “missive” found here is closely related to two other similar texts, but has by far the more complete and better version.
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