New Books In Folklore

Alexander Langlands is a British archaeologist, historian, writer, and broadcaster.  His most recent book, Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts, was published by Norton to great acclaim in 2017 and has just been reissued as a paperback.  Cræft is an antiquated spelling of “craft” and in the book, Langlands explores what the word meant when it first appeared in English over a thousand years ago. Our modern understanding of the term, Langlands argues, is at some remove from its original meaning.  When it first began to appear in the writings of Anglo-Saxons, the term referred to “power or skill in the context of knowledge, ability, and a kind of learning” (17). In Cræft, Langlands combines scholarly research with personal anecdotes as he discusses a range of pursuits which he himself has undertaken, including hay-making, hedgerow planting, dry wall building, and roof thatching.Folklorist Millie Rahn describes Cræft as follows: “This beautifully-written book is