Audiobook · read by volunteers
Current Superstitions
Fanny Dickerson Bergen (1846–1924)
Read by Denny Sayers (d. 2015), roolynninms, Caitlin Kelly, Claire Goget, Silver, Andrew Lebrun, Scherzando, Kelli Robinson, Michael Corley · 21 chapters · 4 h 36
About the book
Do you knock on wood? Avoid walking under ladders? Believe that a dream can foretell the future? Chances are you grew up around some kind of superstitious lore, and Fanny Dickerson Bergen collected a great deal of it. Current Superstitions collects beliefs from across North America and arranges them by subject: babyhood and childhood, marriage, wishes and dreams, luck, warts and cures, omens of death and funeral customs. Bergen was one of the first researchers of North American oral traditions, and her book is both a curiosity cabinet and a valuable record. Denny Sayers, roolynninms, Caitlin Kelly and six other LibriVox volunteers share the twenty-one chapters, which last around four and a half hours. From warts to weddings and from dreams to omens, no corner of daily life escapes her notice.
Introduction
Fanny Dickerson Bergen (1846-1924) was an American folklorist who was among the early collectors of oral traditions in North America. She worked with the American Folklore Society, which was founded in 1888, and she contributed to its efforts to gather and publish traditional beliefs, customs and sayings before they disappeared.
Current Superstitions was published in 1896 as a memoir of the society, and it brings together a large number of beliefs that she collected from many informants. It is arranged by topic, with chapters devoted to the stages of life, to love and marriage, to luck and misfortune, to cures and to death. The entries are given in the words of those who reported them, and the author's own commentary is limited. This makes the book a rich source for the study of popular belief at the end of the nineteenth century.
The recording consists of twenty-one chapters and lasts about four and a half hours. It was made by LibriVox volunteers including Denny Sayers, roolynninms and Caitlin Kelly. The contents range from the quaint to the unsettling, and listeners should expect that many of the beliefs reflect attitudes of the period. It is a diverting and often surprising listen, which also reveals how many familiar habits and sayings have long roots, and which invites us to think about what we still believe without quite knowing why. The beliefs are often funny, sometimes sad and occasionally strangely familiar, and the book gives a lively sense of the voices of people who passed them on from generation to generation.
Public domain
Fanny Dickerson Bergen died in 1924: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text