Journal articles on the topic 'Romani Folk art'

The given article presents an analytical approach to the evolution of choreographic art in Romania and the Re-public of Moldova. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the evolution of classical stage dance as well as folk dance. It should be noted that the development of choreographic art in Romania was strongly influenced by European choreography. The 19th and 20th centuries were the most significant for the development of Romanian ballet. The most famous classical ballets were staged: Zâna păpușilor, Lacul lebedelor, Priculiciul etc. The fame of Romanian ballet was brought by: Anton Romanowski, Floria Capsali, Oleg Danovski. In the Republic of Moldova, ballet - developed under the influence of European and Russian choreography, having an important base - folk dance. Namely, folk dance created premises for the establishment of popular stage dance, represented, first of all, by the academic ensemble ,,Joc” – the first professional folk dance ensemble, led for several years by people’s artist V.Curbet.

In Europe the tradition of building in wood, which has roots reaching back into antiquity, is now mostly lost. Wooden architecture does, however, survive in parts of Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania. In addition to their architectural interest, the buildings contain a rich legacy of folk-art.

The authors aim to present to the interested public some moments of the valorification activity of the folk heritage by organising some exhibitions abroad in the period 1924-1956. From Brussels to Prague, from London to Vienna, Frankfurt or Geneva, from Paris to Sweden, the collections and artefacts of the Romanian folk culture have crossed and impressed the world. In addition, the article contains brief presentations of the events to which the Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography contributed with artefacts of its collections, and also part of the papers, correspondence, briefly minutes, the way of work in the mentioned period. The organisation, the way of cooperation between institutions and the responsibility of the ones involved in the transport of the artefacts are presented in this article. Not least, the paper presents information about the collections and artefacts lost, disappeared or damaged during the period they were abroad. We think that the topic can be an example of good practice nowadays through the interest, concern and seriousness with which the ethnographic collections were treated by the specialists and also the paper is a proof of the fact that the collections and artefacts of the Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography have been recognised abroad.

"Romanian ethnomusicology has a series of less discussed and, implicitly, less understood topics. One of them is the relatively vast literature that addresses the new folklore that appeared after the installation of the communist regime and the folk music of artistic ensembles performed on stage. Most of the texts written on these subjects display a strong political and ideological pressure. Consequently, they are either forgotten or superficially perceived as evidence of a repressive regime, adding to the general belief that the communist regime turned peasant art into an instrument of propaganda. Starting from a study signed by Ioan R. Nicola on music collected from Mărginimea Sibiului, we will try to understand the theoretical horizon and the ideological limitations that influenced the way researchers wrote about contemporary music phenomena in the second half of the twentieth century. Despite the constraints, we argue that ethnomusicologists had at hand a coherent system of analysis of the folk music, which they had to adapt to the official ideology. Keywords: new folklore, amateur artistic ensembles, folk performance, ethnomusicologic research, communist ideology"

The article is devoted to the creative work of the Ukrainian Diaspora scientist, teacher, historian of art, architect and graphic artist, Prince Vsevolod Karmazyn-Kakovsky (1898–1988), about whom there is very little information in Ukraine. The study emphasizes his Ukrainian roots. The publication is based on materials from the home archive of Ph.D., sculptor and artist Kristina Kishakevich-Kachaluba from Switzerland. Prince Vsevolod Karmazyn-Kakovsky studied and lived in Ukraine until 1944. In 1944 he left Ukraine for permanent residence in Romania. As a teacher he organized faculties of landscape architecture in universities in Ukraine (Odessa, Kharkiv) and Romania (Iasi). From 1978, professor lived and worked in Italy, then in France, Germany, lectured on the history of Ukrainian art, cooperated with Ukrainian research institutions in Western countries. As an artist he created and implemented the projects of health and recreational complexes on the Black Sea coast in Ukraine and Romania, which combined architecture with natural landscape, contributing to human health and longevity, and embodied the principles he established for enriching the expressiveness of landscapes. The Prince founded the Research Institute of Landscape Architecture (1921–1981), which worked in Ukraine, and then in Romania. This institution was focused on combining and harmonizing endogenous (internal) factors of human longevity with exogenous (external) factors — the synthesis of nature with art. The scientist argued that the tree crown shapes (triangular, ellipse-like, round) differently influence the mood and psychological state of a person, therefore, developed special health boxets in sanatorium complexes. This method of healing people, proposed by V. Karmazyn-Kakovsky in 1971–1981, was adopted in Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Italy, Germany, and the United States of America. As a scientist he published more than 200 scientific works, including Monographs devoted to Ukrainian art, Lemkivska and Boykovska churches, art of Ukrainian houses, Ukrainian books. He designed his own works and covers for his books. He was skilled in the technique of pencil, sepia, watercolor, skillfully conveyed the space in the landscape, was perfect in the technique of pen and ink. The artist’s graphics is dominated by subjects closely related to his scientific works in the field of art history. Karmazyn-Kakovsky supplements almost all of his works with illustrations, headpieces, stylized folk motifs, architectural historical monuments of Romanian and Ukrainian cultures, valuable for the history of Ukrainian art, and landscape projects. V. Karmazyn-Kakovsky made more than 1200 drawings of wooden Ukrainian churches. He had personal exhibitions in Warsaw, Rome, Paris, Munich.

The main theme of the proposed paper concerns the professional training and artistic activity of Theodor Vasilescu, choreographer and dancer, specialized in folk dance, with a rich international activity during the communist regime. The analysis will focus on illustrating how the artist’s biography was influenced by a new trend in the satellite states of the U.R.S.S., namely that of transforming traditional dance into art with a political substratum. Also, the main thread of the article will consist in revealing the specific type of relationship between the artist and the regime, dominated by a permanent awareness of the mutual benefits of this partnership: for the dancer Theodor Vasilescu it was the chance to develop a successful career, which for the propaganda apparatus implied a strong image campaign for Romania, abroad. Regarding the temporal framework, the analyzed period will focus on the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, 1965-1989, relevant in Theodor Vasilescu’s career path, as well as in the dissemination of his work results. There are three important aspects that will be analyzed in this article: first, the recovery of an important cultural trend in Romanian history, when, through the influence on the Soviet chain, folklore and traditional dance became an art form strongly subsumed to an ideology. This aspect led to the foundation of many Folk Ensembles with a specific type of artistic manifestations, including folk dance. At the same time, it will be illustrated how the regime was involved in financing and promoting this type of dance, by including it in the development of the most important national performances, by encouraging research in this field and creating professional opportunities through training and also by organizing an International Folklore Festival, “Romania 69”. This approach definitively changed the professional career of Theodor Vasilescu. The last aspect consists in presenting the international career of the choreographer, as a direct result of the increased interest that the communist regime had in promoting Romania’s image abroad. This made the Romanian folk dance very popular in countries such as Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Germany. Also, the frequent tournaments con-tributed to the increase of the Securitate’s interest in his daily activity. The main categories of sources for documentation will consist of: my personal archive which contains two interviews with Theodor Vasilescu, documents in the funds and collections of the National Archives of Romania (The Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, Propaganda and Agitation Section, Organizational Section), also those of the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives.

The last decades are time of dynamic changes in folk music, which is a part of contemporary Bulgarian musical culture. Singer's performing art related to Bulgarian musical folklore is the part of Bulgarian culture that makes it recognizable and valued in the world. Thus, the Bulgarian folk song presented by its contemporary performers is perceived simultaneously as one of the oldest and most local manifestations of art in the cultural world, and as well as an artefact and a value, one of the most modern and global manifestations of the shared cultural heritage of humanity. The Bulgarian folklore, with its specificity and characteristics, develops on the land of the Bulgarian ethnos and it was formed on a space in Southeastern Europe, which far exceeds the state borders of present-day Bulgaria. Bearers of this culture are as numerous diasporas in southern Russia, in Ukraine and Moldavia, as well as Bulgarian settlers in the Banat region of present-day Romania, population in Bosilegrad, Dimitrovgrad and the surrounding villages in present-day Serbia. Why is it so important to preserve and rediscover our folk song, to develop it as art, concert policy, media content, educational practices, market mechanisms? Bulgarian folk song contains every single human experience, every emotion, the history of past and present generations, wisdom, folly, heroism, cunning, love, hate, faith, hope, kindness ... It is a mystical memory, a philosophy of life, a way to understand the spiritual and the eternal. The folklore song is both old and modern; simultaneously our, local and common, global; because it reflects our cultural identity and makes us unique and recognizable in the world; because it is one of the strongest manifestations of the human, the aesthetic, the moral. Imagine that you are listening to a favorite folk song: the power of words pierces the brain, the melody caresses and warms the heart, the magic of the song carries you like a time machine backwards, in the memory of the Golden Ages of harmonious worlds and forward, in the dreamed better worlds... Without the folk song, our Bulgarian world will not be the same because our Bulgarian folk song is bread, life, history, past, present and future.

SummaryAt least sixteen whole or partial circular lead tanks have been found in Roman Britain, several of them decorated with Christian symbols. Over the past fifty years different uses have been ascribed to these vessels, some secular, some religious. The objective of this paper is two-fold: to examine the motifs used in the decoration of the tanks and to attempt to discover the purpose of the vessels. It is proposed that the tanks are all Christian objects and that they were used in the baptismal ceremony for the footwashing rite, a practice carried out in various parts of the Christian world at least up to the sixth century.

One of the most enjoyable characteristics of London musical life is that it is peopled by a generous number of foreigners who, every so often, take it upon themselves to enlighten the rest of us as to the music we are missing from back home. These can, of course, be hit-and-miss occasions, but it's in the nature of exploring unknown music of any age that you will happily put up with a handful of duds if you come away with a real discovery ringing in your ears. The Second London Festival of Bulgarian Culture (I seem to have missed the First) ran in various venues over the course of November 2012 and also accommodated art, film, literature, theatre and other forms of music (folk, pop and jazz). It opened its classical batting with a concert of ‘Bulgarian and British Symphonic Folk Songs’ in Cadogan Hall on 3 November, with the Varna Symphony Orchestra, Paulina Voices (the choir of St Paul's Girls' School) and the Holst Choir (from James Allen's Girls' School) conducted by Martin Georgiev. Pancho Vladigerov (1899–1978) being the only Bulgarian composer generally known to the outside world, it made sense to begin with him. His Shumen Miniatures, six attractive piano pieces based on folk-tunes from the town, Shumen, where Vladigerov grew up, were written in 1934 and orchestrated at some later date vouchsafed neither by the concert-programme nor the worklist at www.vladigerov.org. They embrace a variety of lighter moods: the first and fourth pieces offer lazy and lyrical summer-evening hazes and the second and third vigorous dances; the proximity of the fifth to the style of Enescu brought a reminder of the long common border Bulgaria shares with Romania (Shumen is around 100 km away from it).

Abstract The origins of the national choral art are based on Church singing, which has been widely developed since the founding of the Putnyansky and Nyametsky monasteries. In the further development of the centuries, Church singing intertwined with folk choral singing, which was reflected in the works of such conductors and composers as G. Muzichesku, M. Berezovsky, A. Kristya, M. Byrke, V. Popovich. Special attention is paid to the creative and conducting activities of Gavriil Muzichesku, all of whose initiatives were innovative and progressive, later becoming the leading ones in the national choral activities of Romania and Moldova. This article identifies and systematizes the main trends related to the process of creating vocal and choral works and their application in the system of Romanian and Moldovan musical education. Their analysis shows that the composer worked on the theoretical generalization of his own experience, turned to the best ideas of domestic and foreign pedagogy, including Russian, and thanks to this he was able to bring his knowledge and experience into a fairly coherent and integral system of musical education and education through vocal and choral culture.

The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has caused a large number of cases and hospitalizations in the pediatric population. Infants due to their age are susceptible to viral infections that may have a worse prognosis. Therefore, the aim of the current study has been to characterize the clinical features and the outcome of infants hospitalized with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection during the Omicron wave. We conducted a retrospective study of all consecutive infants hospitalized with symptomatic COVID-19 and no other co-infections, from January to September 2022 in one of the largest infectious diseases hospitals from Bucharest, Romania. A total of 613 infants were included in the analysis. The median age was 5 months (IQR: 3, 8 months). The clinical features were dominated by fever (96.4%), cough (64.8%) and loss of appetite (63.3%), and overall, respiratory symptoms were the most numerous (76.0%). Infants between 1-3 months old had a 1.5-fold increased risk of elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) values, and a longer length of hospitalization as compared to older infants. Infants between 7-9 months of age had 1.5-fold higher odds of loss of appetite, 1.7-fold more frequent cough and 1.6-fold more frequent digestive symptoms compared to infants in other age groups. The presence of digestive symptoms increased the probability of hepatic cytolysis (increased ALT) by 1.9-fold. Continued monitoring of COVID-19 among infants is very necessary, given the progressive character of SARS-CoV-2, in order to take correct and rapid therapeutic measures and to adapt to clinical changes driven by viral variant change.

Abstract The “Easter Triptych” project was conducted in six annual editions (except for 2020 and 2021 – the years of the Coronavirus Pandemic). It was conceived and achieved in the name and in the spirit of the three important moments in the history of our humanity: Birth, Passion and Joy of the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. This great religious cultural project was attended by important personalities of Iaşi and not only, such as lyrical artists from the Romanian National Opera Iaşi, church persons from the Metropolitan Church of Moldavia and Bukovina, university professors, ethnographers, craftsmen and students. We were joined by Radio Romania Cultural Bucharest, Radio Iasi, TV Iasi, Radio “Trinitas” and “Moldova” National Museum Complex Iasi. With this important project, I also went to Austria, Vienna, to the Romanian Cultural Center and to the Republic of Moldova, to “Alecu Russo” State University Balti. Each edition presented under its generous scope, equally traditions, customs and beliefs firmly established in our soul and conscience as Romanians. The events included moments of musical art: classical musical works (lyrical, instrumental, choral), Christmas carols, Easter songs, religious poems, book launches, exhibitions of decorated eggs from the Bukovina area, exhibitions of icons, crosses, carpets woven in monasteries, ceramic objects from Horezu, wooden sculpture objects and traditional folk costumes. In addition to these, there was a CD: “Easter Triptych”.

This article examines the iconographic heritage of the Old Believer Lipovan Rogachevsky-Nikita family in the context of history of Romanian rural localities. Based on the expedition material, analysis is conducted on the peculiarities of folk icon and local traditions that established in the Old Believer center of Romania. The reviewed documentary sourced were acquired in the course of expeditions and further personal contact with the family. The collected material contains history of the family of iconographers, their lifestyle and customs, conditions for fulfilling the orders that are closely related to the history of this rural locality and way of life of the Nekrasov Cossacks. The research is of applied nature in the area of art history, as well as of interdisciplinary in nature. The article employs the methods of stylistic and historical-cultural analysis; biographical method for reconstruction of biography of the family members and their artistic heritage. New records on the dynasty of Romanian iconographers are introduced, which expands  the information on the Lipovan icon and indicate regional peculiarities of its creation. The author also introduces the new names and monuments of iconography into the scientific discourse that allows clarifying the attribution. The artistic heritage of iconographers of the late XIX – early XX centuries is also introduced into the scientific discourse: Rogachevsky-Nikita; in the XX century – Egor Nikitovich Nikita and Roman Egorovich Nikita.

The aim of the article is to add a religious studies perspective to the recent debates on the establishment of religion in public space. In light of this background, it highlights the global dimension of the corresponding processes by analyzing the early developments of religious non-governmental organizations formally accredited to the United Nations organization (UN). Based upon three case analyses—the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, Pax Romana, and the Friends World Committee for Consultation—the article presents a two-fold argument. On the one hand, it makes the point that these organizations started out to approach the UN context in quite distinct ways drawing upon core ideas of their respective tradition in order to frame their activities. On the other hand, they adapted to the structures of the UN in order to act efficiently. This triggered shifts in the internal boundaries between the religious and the secular.

AbstractThe influences of Chinese traditional culture, especially the traditional Three Teachings and folk religion, on the Mandarin Union Version of the Chinese Bible (first edition, 1919) and the resulting complications are explicit in some contexts but implicit and subtle in other contexts. Some influences are helpful for Chinese people's proper understanding of biblical truth and theology in a Chinese context, but other influences can be misleading. In this paper, I will examine three translated Chinese phrases in the Mandarin Union Version that show evidence of Ruist influences: (1) “xūxīn de rén” “虛心的人”, in Matthew 5:3, (2) “tiānguó shì nǔlì jìnrù de﹐nǔlì de rén jiù dézháole” “天國是努力進入的﹐努力的人就得著了”, Matthew 11:12, and (3) “lǎoliàn” “老練”in Romans 5:4. Ruist influences is explicit in the first two cases but implicit in the third case, I will first analyze the verses and argue that they reflect the dominant Ruist ideology of moral self-cultivation instead of the biblical vision of transformation by “gracious moral cultivation”. Then I will demonstrate how Chinese readers might respond based on the context of each verse: Some Chinese readers might detect the inconsistenices between the Ruist emphasis on moral self-cultivation and a more general biblical theology, especially in an intertextual context of other Bible passages that explicitly teach the total depravity of human beings (e.g. Romans), as well as reconciliation and redemption by the free gift of Christ's grace for salvation and sanctification (e.g. Ephesians). Other Chinese readers might be misled by Ruist suggestions that they pursue sanctification and transformation only by means of moral self-cultivation that relies solely on their willpower. I will conclude by arguing how mistranslating and misinterpreting these verses can cause possible complications, especially negatively masking behaviour, in the personal and interpersonal spiritual transformation and ecclesiological development among Chinese Christians.

Abstract The context of public governance outsourcing social services and constantly downshifting its role creates the premises for increasing impact of crowdsourced social entrepreneurship and grassroots mobilization. The study envisions the innovative concept of social entrepreneurship by crowdfunding through a sports event, with Swimathon as study case, where most of Romanian NGOs are active to promote their calls for fundraising. Swimmer-participants are fundraisers who take on a challenge (e.g. swimming a target distance) with the aim to raise funds, in teams, for the causes they support. This fundraising event involves donors in a participative setting that combines short-term volunteering and crowdfunding. The research aims to understand practices by which crowdfunding projects grouped into categories navigate constructs on time. The ensuing research questions are as follows: What typology of time orientation do crowdfunding projects in the Romanian landscape of sports-oriented social entrepreneurship display? What do they shift, reshape, and build on in terms of time agency, time management and time empowerment? The current study seeks to uncover and chart patterns of time-bound discursive strategies that aim to attract donors for crowdfunding projects in Romania. It brings forth questions of power and influence, by explaining and synthesizing the variety of manners in which trade-offs and synergies and modelled and mapped. The thematic analysis of fundraising calls for action is structured two-fold, namely: the denotative and the connotative dimension of time. The first component reveals time agency, time use and time management as keynote discursive trends, whereas the second reveals the following categories: time and emotion, quality time and time pressure. Metaphors of time used in the discourse over sustainability appeared coupled with pressure to intervene fast. Findings gathered by connotative discourse analysis induce the idea of grassroots mobilization and individual agency to the forefront, whereas social structures of institutional support are afforded background importance. The study ends with a discussion on implications of using time cues for emerging trends in the build-up process of Romanian crowdfunding projects.

Rapid depopulation of rural areas caused overpopulation in urban areas. This led to cultural changes and made it inevitably necessary to define the new folk and folklore by the folklorists. The fact that Alan Dundes defines the public as "any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor" has enabled the folklorists to examine the cultural products that have emerged in cities as a result of the developments and changes in regard to migration and urbanization.Latife Tekin, one of the prominent authors in Turkish literature after 1980, published her second book called Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills in 1984. The book is a story of a slum. The compliance processes of the slum dwellers and the struggle with such issues as the wind, unemployment, and poverty have been narrated through the cultural products. Based on Alan Dundes' perspective from the articles called 'Who are the folk?' and 'What is folklore?', the novel has adopted the point of view that "each group has its own folklore," and some distinctive traditions that squatters call their own have been determined in the novel. The emergence of the traditions due to the fact that the slum dwellers cannot transform into urbanites and yet cannot remain provincial either establishes the primary topic of the present article.Extended English abstract is in the end of PDF (TURKISH) file. ÖzetKöyden kente göçlerin hızla artması köy nüfusunu azaltırken kent nüfusunu arttırmıştır. Bu durum kültürel değişimlere sebep olmuş ve halk bilimciler açısından yeni bir halk ve folklor tanımlamasını gerekli kılmıştır. Alan Dundes’ın halkı “en az bir ortak faktörü paylaşan grup” olarak tanımlaması göç ve şehirleşme eksenindeki gelişmeler ve değişimler sonucunda şehirlerde ortaya çıkan kültürel ürünleri halk bilimciler açısından incelenebilir kılmıştır.1980 sonrası Türk edebiyatının öne çıkan isimlerinden Latife Tekin, ikinci kitabı olan “Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları” romanını 1984 senesinde yayımlamıştır. Kitapta bir gecekondu mahallesinin hikâyesi anlatılmıştır. Gecekondu sakinlerinin şehre uyum süreçleri ve rüzgâr, işsizlik, yoksulluk gibi sorunlarla mücadeleleri kültürel ürünler üstünden verilmiştir. Romana Alan Dundes’ın “Halk kimdir?” ve “Folklor nedir?” makalesindeki görüşlerinden de yola çıkılarak “her topluluğun kendi folkloru vardır.” bakış açısıyla bakılmış, romanda konducuların kendilerine ait olduklarını kabul ettikleri âdetler tespit edilmiştir. Gecekondu sakinlerinin kentli olamayışı bununla birlikte köylü de kalamayışlarının doğurduğu bu âdetler makalenin ana konusunu oluşturmuştur

Most of the homes in the Budzhak region are interesting historical and architectural sites and deserve attention. Considering their current state, one can see the manifestation of a number of architectural features: well-established national traditions, authorship of folk craftsmen, the influence of academic art, historical architectural styles (Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Modernist), as well as the features of serial time. The unifying factor is, on the one hand, the similarity of ideological and creative thoughts and the desire of folk craftsmen to give a compositional and stylistic integrity to the whole object-space environment of the manor (in particular, in the exterior and interior of a dwelling house), on the other-ethnic identity manifests itself perfectly recognizable through ornamental motifs and forms by elements of certain national symbols. The article deals with the national features of the traditional residential architecture of Budzhak Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Gagauzians, Germans, selected for research as the most numerous in the national composition of Budzhak (southern Bessarabia) according to the population censuses from 1822 to 2001. Budzhak's national composition is presented in pie charts. The national identity of the compositional features and decorative and artistic means of expressing the dwellings of Budzhak, in particular its central regions (Saratov and Tatarbunar regions of Odessa region) of the given ethnic groups of the population is revealed. In general, the main large volumes and forms of traditional residential buildings are the construction of walls and roofs. Picturesque volumetric compositions acquire buildings with a combined type of roof that is used to cover the intersecting several volumes of the building, the kind with roofs with artistically decorated attic windows, located both in the plane of the roof slope and on the pediment of the main front. The subjects of detailed consideration and research are: ornamental-plastic decor made of cement, brick, lime, metal. Artistic carving -on wood and metal. Artistic forging, as a rule, has common compositional features with the architecture of the home and the estate as a whole. The entrance to the apartment house is decidedly representative and colorful enough. Borrowing and imitating natural counterparts (prototypes), folk craftsmen have created unique works that clearly reflect interethnic and religious-everyday contacts, professional borrowings, family traditions and the achievements of modern times.Photographic examples of dwellings typical of nationality (the second half of the XIX –the second half of the twentieth century) are given. The collected photos are dated 2015, 2017, 2018. Numerous photo materials of the respective states were considered by the author for the identification of houses by nationality: Ukraine, Russia, Moldavia, ATO Gagauzia, Romania, Germany, Bulgaria. The resulting comparative tables and schemes of ethnic influences are quite large in volume and can therefore be illustrated and analyzed in the next article by the author. However, the features noted briefly atthis stage made it possible to draw some conclusions, which made it possible to distinguish the typical residential homes of the studied national groups from the vast number of mixed types characteristic of the South of Ukraine as a historical and ethnographic region as a whole. The distinctive features of the dwellings of Budzhak Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Gagauzians, Germans are considered and detailed, places of decorative and color accents in the general composition of estates are revealed. Tradition is a form of translation of social experience in the philosophical sense. This or that type of stage borrowing of any object that evolves, including culture, is possible provided that the old goes into the new and works in it productively. Tradition acquires the features of stability when it becomes flexible, dynamic, able to absorb the best qualities of artistic cultures of other nations and groups, and also as a result of self-development. A comprehensive study of the featuresof traditional residential architecture provides the basis for the scientific substantiation of restoration works and the unveiling of the tourist potential of Budzhak. Taking into account the multifaceted architectural forms of residential objects, both geographical and sociocultural, it is possible to identify not only the visual and morphological features of traditional residential buildings of different ethnic groups, but also the semantic structure of the image of traditional architecture, which meansto develop certain techniques for the use of ethnic styles. houses for the future. The obtained factual material of this scientific article can be implemented in a wide range of architectural and design activities, as well as cultural, ethno-cultural and art-science practices.

-A. James Arnold, Michael Gilkes, The literate imagination: essays on the novels of Wilson Harris. London: Macmillan, 1989. xvi + 180 pp.-Jean Besson, John O. Stewart, Drinkers, drummers, and decent folk: ethnographic narratives of village Trinidad. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. xviii + 230 pp.-Hymie Rubinstein, Neil Price, Behind the planter's back. London: MacMillan, 1988. xiv + 274 pp.-Robert Dirks, Joseph M. Murphy, Santería: an African religion in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. xi + 189 pp.-A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: merchant capitalism and the Angolan slave trade, 1720-1830. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. xxx + 770 pp.-Anne Pérotin-Dumon, Lawrence C. Jennings, French reaction to British slave Emancipation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. ix + 228 pp.-Mary Butler, Hilary McD. Beckles, White servitude and black slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715. Knoxville: University of Tennesse Press, 1989. xv + 218 pp.-Franklin W, Knight, Douglas Hall, In miserable slavery: Thomas Thistlewod in Jamaica, 1750-1786. London: MacMillan, 1989. xxi + 322 pp.-Ruby Hope King, Harry Goulbourne, Teachers, education and politics in Jamaica 1892-1972. London: Macmillan, 1988. x + 198 pp.-Mary Turner, Francis J. Osbourne S.J., History of the Catholic Church in Jamaica. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988. xi + 532 pp.-Christina A. Siracusa, Robert J. Alexander, Biographical dictionary of Latin American and Caribbean political leaders. New York, Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 1988. x + 509 pp.-Sue N. Greene, Brenda F. Berrian ,Bibliography of women writers from the Caribbean (1831-1986). Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1989. 360 pp., Aart Broek (eds)-Romain Paquette, Singaravélou, Pauvreté et développement dans les pays tropicaux, hommage a Guy Lasserre. Bordeaux: Centre d'Etudes de Géographie Tropicale-C.N.R.S./CRET-Institut de Gépgraphie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1989. 585 PP.-Robin Cohen, Simon Jones, Black culture, white youth: the reggae traditions from JA to UK. London: Macmillan, 1988. xxviii + 251 pp.-Bian D. Jacobs, Malcom Cross ,Lost Illusions: Caribbean minorities in Britain and the Netherlands. London: Routledge, 1988. 316 pp., Han Entzinger (eds)

Издревле у каждой нации были истории про вечных героев, которые передавалась из уст в уста. Если в одних сказаниях они были значимы героическими подвигами, то в других оставили след в истории народа. Среди них есть еще такие герои, которые умели любить и были верны к любимому человеку до конца своей жизни. Народ идеализировал этих героев, обогатил положительными качествами, которыми хотел увидеть в них. История любви этих героев сохранились в устных и рукописных формах. В фольклористике эти сказания или истории имеют определенное название-романический эпос. У тюркских народов, испытавших влияние персов, в т.ч. у татар, их именуют дастаном или кыйссой. В процессе изучения романических дастанов мировозрение и характерные особенности главных героев дает возможность узнать о духовных ценностях и об идеалах татарского народа. Актуальность данного исследования обусловлена недостаточностью изучения системы образов в татарских романических дастанах. Материал для исследования составляют тексты эпосов любовного характера, бытующие у татар, как «Лейла и Меджнун», «Тахир и Зухра», «Кузы-Курпяч и Баян-сылу», «Сказание о Йусуфе», «Сайфульмулюк» и др. Цель статьи–определить главные качества героев, их характерные особенности в татарских романических дастанах. Для достижения поставленной цели решены следующие задачи: выявлены главные герои любовного эпоса татар, рассмотрены их поведение в разных ситуациях, сопоставлены характерные качества главного героя фольклорных вариантов с героями тюркскими и персидскими поэмами. В данной статье применяются сравнительно-сопоставительные и историко-типологические методы. Проведенное исследование позволяет сделать вывод о том, что, у каждого варианта довольно много фольклорных вариантов и литературных версий. Что касается главных героев, несмотря на наличие большого количества вариантов, в основном, они не изменяются, их внешний вид и выполняемая в дастанах роль остаются неизменными. Это постоянство сохраняется и в литературных произведениях, но основные образы, отраженные в татарском народном творчестве, обогащаются таким качествами как терпение и решительность. Since ancient times, every nation has been telling stories about eternal heroes, which are passed from person to person. Whereas in some legends, they accomplished significant heroic feats, in others, they left a mark in their nation’s history. Among these heroes are some who knew how to love and were faithful to their beloved for the rest of their lives. People idealized these heroes, and enriched them with the positive qualities that they wanted to see. The love story of these characters has survived both orally and in manuscripts. In folkloristics, these tales or stories are called romance epics. Among the Turkic peoples who came under Persian influence, including the Tatars, they are called dastans or kyissa. Studying the worldview presented in romantic dastans world and the characteristic features of the main heroes provides the opportunity to learn about the spiritual values and ideals of the Tatar people. This study is relevant due to the insufficiency of current scholarship on the system of imagery in the Tatar romanic dastans. The research materials for this study are the texts of epics about love, which among the Tatars includes “Leila and Majnun,” “Takhir and Zukhra,” “Kuzy Kurpech and Bayansylu,” “The story of Yusuf,” “The Sayfulmuluk,” and others. The purpose of this article is to identify the main qualities of the imagery used in dastans, as well as their characteristic features. To achieve this goal, we completed the following tasks: identified the main characters of the Tatar love epic, analyzed their behaviour in different situations, and compared the characteristic qualities of the main hero of Tatar folklore variants with heroes of Turkic and Persian poems. This study used comparative and historical-typological methods. This study allows us to conclude that, each variant has many of folklore variants and literary versions. As for the protagonists, although there are many variations, they are mostly similar to each other, their appearance and the role they perform in dastans remains unchanged. This type of permanence is preserved in literary works, but the basic imagery reflected in Tatar folk art is enriched by such qualities as patience and determination.

More than 100 years have elapsed since the discovery of the Japod necropolises in the Una valley, south of Bihać. The Jezerine and Ribić necropolises were excavated in the late 19th century (K. Kovačević, P. Mirković 1890: 330-337; V. Radimsky 1892: 301-310) and another, smaller necropolis in Golubić was systematically excavated in the 1960s (I. Čremošnik 1956: 126-138; B. Raunig 1968: 81-98). The third necropolis is not dealt with here, since the amber artifacts are identical to those from Jezerine. A total of 553 graves were excavated in Jezerine, of which 228 contained skeletons, 298 cinerary urns, 28 cremated remains without urns, and two containing cinerary urns in which the skull of the deceased was laid over the lid. The pre-Roman and early Roman necropolis in Ribić had only six graves with skeletons, 296 containing cinerary urns, and one containing crematedremains with no urn. V. Radimski (V. Radimsky 1982:301-310; 1893: 37-92; 237-308; 369-466; 575-623) and V. Ćurčić (V.Ćurčić 1898: 625-656) have written about the findings of the excavations of the Japod necropolises in the Una valley, and many archaeologists have been engaged in analyzing the archaeological material. The fullest scientific treatment is that of Z. Marić,dating from the 1960s, (Z. Marić 1968: 5-79) while more recently the issue has been seriously addressed by B. Raunig (B. Raunig 2004), while B. Tessmann deals with the Jezerine burial ground as part of her doctoral thesis with new absolute chronological.There is no doubt that Z. Marić has produced the most complete chronological and cultural definition to date of the archaeological material from these necropolises while, in so doing, stressing that the chronology of the Japod region is a problem not easily solved, given the great many specific features of local significance. Quite simply, Japod material does not readily fit into the formative cultural circles of neighbouring regions, and is characterized by a very pronouncedconservatism, as a result of which some forms survive for a decade or more, or even as much as a century. Despite these remarks by Z. Marić, in this paper we adhere to his relative chronology, while taking a more relaxed position in regard to the absolute chronology, as the author recommends. We have not given a detailed overview of all the archaeological artifactsmade of amber, but have selected those that are typical of certain stages of the burials in the necropolises; these artifacts also vividly illustrate the aesthetic needs and economic strength of the Japod population of the Una valley. By analyzing and tracing these artifacts, century by century, from the distant past right up to the arrival of the Romans in this part of the world, wehave obtained a clear picture of the distinctiveness of the culture, art and religion of the prehistoric world in the Una valley. Japod art is highly diverse in both content and expression, though it belongs almost solely to the applied arts, with the majority of its products consisting of jewellery or associated with clothing (B. Raunig 2004). An overall consideration of the jewelleryin the graves reveals that these are heavy, solid artifacts, even in the case of fine material such as amber: amber beads in necklaces, or combined with bronze in fibulae, have a diameter of 4-5 cm or even more. It can fairly be said that one of the principal features of Japod jewellery is the abundance and diversity of the application of amber. Amber beads, usually leftrough or very simply finished, were used mainly for necklaces and fibulae, but also for bracelets, earrings and pendants. Fibulae were the most common and, for Japod costumes, the most important decorativecum- utilitarian artifacts. This type of jewellery was favoured by the Japods in the Una valley more than anywhere else, and thus came in a wide range of designs;the Japods wore them as part of their folk costume right up to the time they lost their independence, and even in the first century CE, under Roman rule (R. Drechsler-Bižić 1987). The general characteristics of the amber grave offeringsin the Una valley can be reduced to a few basic observations. In the second stage, it was very unusual to find an amber bead or two in cinerary graves, whereas they were quite common in skeletal graves, usually by the head or around the neck, as worn inlife. Since there are other differences between these two basic types of burial, Z. Marić hypothesizes that the skeletal graves belonged to the female members of the local population and the cinerary graves to the male incomers from Pannonia. In stage three, amber features in greater quantities in cinerary graves as well, although skeletal graves still contain much morenumerous and richer artifacts; only in stage four does the ratio of such artifacts become equal between the two types of burials. During stage five, the number of amber artifacts in cinerary graves increases sharply, and it is from this very period, as already noted, that the two most richly equipped graves date, with the remains of incineration and numerous amber artifacts:grave 278 from Jezerine and grave 10 from Ribić (Z.Marić 1968:5-79; B. Raunig 2004). We can only guess at the routes by which amber reached the Japods in the Una valley (N. Negroni- Catacchio 1972: 1-18). The highly decorative dark reddishamber of outstanding quality used to make many of the artifacts found in the graves of the Una valley distinguishes these necropolises from all others of the same period in Europe as a whole. The number of artifacts and, it is fair to say, the coarse workmanship on the amber, suggest that one of the amber routes from the Baltic to the south ran along the Una valley,and that the Japods were intermediaries in the amber trade as well as using these goods. In the 7th century BC this route could have been of major importance, since this was one of the periods of severe cold that rendered the Po valley unsuitable for trade with the distant Baltic region in the north, passing as it did over the Alps, which were impassable, even over thelower passes, during periods of extreme cold. During the 4th century BC the Japods in the Una valley came into direct contact with the Celts, who already dominated the cultural stage in much of Europe. There is no doubt that there was considerable trade between these peoples over a long period, and it would be normal for the Celts to control the amber routes, so thatthis material reached local Japod workshops by way of exchange, in unworked form (A. Palavestra 1988: 205-217; A. Palavestra, V. Krstić 2006). Another type of amber, of poorer quality, translucent and light yellow in colour, from which the triangularand trapezoid beads from the later periods of the necropolises in the Una valley were made, undoubtedly came from a different source from the dark red amber. This type of bead is found in considerable quantities in these necropolises in the 1st century BC, at a time when trade from Hellenistic centres was already widespread. The major centres for the amber trade were then in the northern Black Sea regions (B. Srebrodolski 1984). It is interesting to note that forms of triangular amber beads were known as early as the late Mesolithic in the northern regions of Russia (M. Gimbutas 1985). This form was perhaps dictated bythe actual quality of the raw material from various sites in north-eastern Europe (B. Srebrodolski 1984; A. Palavestra 1993). Finally, it can be said that to confirm, at least in part, these observations on the routes by which amber was imported to the Una valley, a serious and wideranging study of the contemporary cultures would be needed, going well beyond their relationships with their immediate neighbours, along with some more detailed observations of historical facts. Espacially interesting is their relatios with the Celts and Veneto, which for now remains unclear, which directly affects to the different oppinions about ethnic identity Japodes.

The present paper analyses the emergence of a novel field of interest in the philosophical aesthetics of the 1960s in Romania: the aesthetics of everyday life. As such, it first starts by drawing out an overview of the aesthetic discussions in 1950s Romania by closely reading several articles from the main philosophical journal of the period: Cercetări filozofice. In this regard, I focus on two main aspects, namely the theory of reflection, which was the guiding principle of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, and the theory of the social function of art. Further on I will sketch out how these two aspects defined the main traits of the local aesthetics of everyday life, a topic which took the center fold of aesthetic interest for almost a decade, and which has ever since the early 2000s found renewed interest.

Resumen: Este artículo busca indagar sobre la relación entre música y espacio. Desea, así, investigar si existe realmente una ligación entre el espacio y la música, y a su vez, pretende comprender cómo los seres humanos se conectan con los espacios mediante la música. A partir del análisis de cuatro obras de diferentes lugares y tiempos, se intenta reflexionar sobre la música en relación al espacio, aspirando a trazar algunas características, aspectos y rasgos distintivos entre ellas. Las obras son las siguientes: 1) álbum ‘Piedra de plata’ del grupo Sincronicidad Astral hecho con sonidos grabados en el Cerro Colorado, 2) documental ‘Live at Pompeii’ que Pink Floyd hizo en Pompeya, 3) exposición “A cidade sonora” del artista Floriano Romano en Río de Janeiro, 4) canciones que Atahualpa Yupanqui compuso teniendo como inspiración la localidad Cerro Colorado.Palabras clave: Música y Territorio; Territorio simbólico y concreto; Arte sonoro; Música folclórica; Música psicodélica. TERRITORY AND MUSIC – ONE DIALOGUE, MULTIPLE ECHOES: among tonalities, sonorities, acoustic and bustle of the spacesAbstract: The article in question aims to reflect on the dialogue established between music and territory, encompassing under the music all the sounds, noises, tones and sonorities that can be found in places, both urban and rural, both concrete and symbolic. Then, from four artistic works belonging to different artists (the band Sincronicidad Astral, Pink Floyd, Floriano Romano and Atahualpa Yupanqui) and located in different spaces and times (Cerro Colorado 1998, Pompeii 1971, Rio de Janeiro 2012 and Cerro Colorado 1938 -1992), I am interested in identifying the ways in which the territories were present, concretely and symbolically, in the noises, sounds and music of these artistic works.Keywords: Music and Territory; Symbolic and concrete territory; Sound art; Folk music; Psychedelic music.TERRITÓRIO E MÚSICA – UM DIÁLOGO, MÚLTIPLOS ECOS: entre tonalidades, sonoridades, acústicas e barulhos dos espaçosResumo: O artigo em questão pretende refletir sobre o diálogo que se estabelece entre a música e o território, abarcando sob a música todos os sons, ruídos, tons e sonoridades que podem ser encontrados nos territórios, tanto urbanos como rurais, tanto concretos como simbólicos. Então, a partir de quatro obras artísticas pertencentes a diferentes artistas (a banda Sincronicidad Astral, Pink Floyd, Floriano Romano e Atahualpa Yupanqui) e localizadas em diferentes espaços e tempos (Cerro Colorado 1998, Pompeya 1971, Rio de Janeiro 2012 e Cerro Colorado 1938 -1992), interessa-me identificar as formas como os territórios estiveram presentes, concreta e simbolicamente, nos ruídos, nos sons e nas músicas destas obras artísticas.Palavras-chave: Música e Território; Território simbólica e concreto; Arte sonora; Música folclórica; Música psicodélica.

Various theories have emerged as a result of evaluations and studies on nationalism. Among these theories, "primordial theory", "modernist theory" and "ethno-symbolist theory" came to the fore. Primordial theory argues that nations come from the same lineage and share a common religion, language, culture and history. In this theory, there are “naturalistic”, “biological” and “cultural” perspectives. According to modernist theory, nationalism is a social necessity of that period. In this theory, nationalism is evaluated together with the modernization process, which affects social, political and economic developments and changes. In the ethno-symbolist theory, nationalism, ethnic origin and cultural characteristics of nations are emphasized. National symbols are frequently encountered in Turkish oral and written cultural products. Symbols reflecting Turkish nationalism are widely used, especially in Minstrel Literature, a product of Turkish Folk Literature. These symbols appeal to the subconscious of the Turks with their deep meanings. Each symbol has its own semantic national value. The "Turnalar" epic of Ozantürk emphasizes the shared cultural heritage of the Turkish people. In the epic of Turnalar, which consists of three separate works connected to each other, the Turkish communities that make up the Turkish World are described. In the first of these texts, the Turks of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Uzbekistan, Turkey and of Turkmenistan are mentioned. In the second text, Turkish tribes living in a wide geography including countries such as Iraq, Iran, East Turkestan, Crimea, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Yakutia / Sakha, Chuvashia, Altai Republic, Tuva Republic, Khakas Republic are presented. In the third text, the Turks living in countries such as Greece / Western Thrace, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova / Gagauzeli, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Hungary, and Turks who struggle for existence" along with the Turkish presence in Europe are spoken of. The epic of "Turnalar" is a work of Bayram Durbilmez, who also wrote poems in minstrel manner under the pseudonym Ozantürk. Durbilmez is a scholar known for his works in the fields of minstrel literature, tekke-sufi literature and folklore of the Turkish World. This scholar is also known as a Turkist, nationalist intellectual who has served as a member of the board of directors, chairman of the board of directors and a delegate to the headquarters in various non-governmental organizations, foundations and associations that defend Turkish nationalism. The fact that he usually uses the pseudonym Ozantürk in his poems shows that Durbilmez has a nationalist attitude also in the world of art. In this article numerous national symbols that occurs in Ozantürk / Bayram Durbilmez's epic "Turnalar" about the Turkish World and that are shared by Turkish states and communities that exist across many geographical areas will be analysed. The national symbols in question are evaluated within the framework of nationalist theories, some of which through the primordial theory which states there are natural nations, some of which through modernist theory that emerged with the effect of modernization, and some of which through the ethno-symbolist theory that adopts ethnic cultural values. There are also symbols that are evaluated within these three theories. While determining the nationalist attitude in the epic, the scientific foundations of nationalism will also be tried to be shown through the mentions of the poet's academic studies on the Turkish World.

The article presents the preliminary results of the interdisciplinary research (geological and geospatial studies, archaeological excavations, salt production experiments, and ethnographic survey) carried out during 2016-2019, in the site and hybrid saltscape of Băile Figa, well known for its remarkable environmental, ancient and current salt exploitation evidence. Besides, the article aims to evaluate the contribution of the recent research to a better understanding of the environmental context of the site and ancient salt production technology in the Inner Carpathian region. Also, it focuses on the hybrid character of the site and its potential to the transdisciplinary and holistic study. Environmental context. The site is rich in environmental, archaeological and ethnographic evidence. It is positioned in the salt-rich area of the Someșul Mare Basin at the northern edge of the Transylvanian Plain (Fig. 1/2; 2/1). The site is part of the landscape that was and is strongly affected by the dynamics of a salt diapir (Fig. 2/2) and deposits of salt mud, brine and halo-biotic factors, as well as by the intense human activity. Excavation. The excavation was carried out in Trench S.XV (16 m x 14 m), located in the central-southern sector of the site. The trench cut through the stream-bed and steep and high banks of the salt stream that crosses the site from south to north (Fig. 4; 5, 10). Its profile sections show four major stratigraphic units: a blackish topsoil, yellow clay mixed with gravel, salty mud, and the rock salt massif. The excavation was conducted in the mud layer, in the central sector of the trench, and in the clay-and-gravel layer found in its lateral sectors. In the area of ca. 60 square meters of the central sector, the excavation has reached the rock salt massif (Fig. 7-11). The excavation in the trench has uncovered rich evidence for Late Bronze Age salt production: seven interconnected features and around one hundred artifacts. The vast majority of the finds have been uncovered in the mud layer. The uncovered features included five timber structures surviving in the salt mud layer, as well as a ditch and a pit dug in the rock salt massif. Feature 1-XV-2013 (Fig. 12; 14/1) is a structure that includes a cone-shaped wattle-lined pit surrounded by a roundish wattle-made fence. The pit cuts through the mud up to the rock salt massif. Its rock salt bottom was sectioned by a ditch, 0.4-0.5 m wide and over 0.9 m deep. It seems that first, by rather extensive digging, the soil and mud were removed down to the salt massif. Then, a ditch, about 5 m long, 0.4 m wide and over 0.9 m deep (see below), was dug in the rock, from east to west. After that, a cone-shaped outer framework made of wattle (D maximal: 1.2 m, D minimal: 0.4 m, H: 1.8 m) was placed over the ditch, narrow end down. After that, the empty space around the framework was filled with mud. Then the pit was surrounded by a roundish wattle fence. A 1.6 m long massive rope made of three twisted threads (Clematis vitalba) has been found in the ditch (Fig. 41). Four samples taken from the wattle framework have produced five dates which fall between 2821±24 and 2778±26 BP. Feature 2-XV-2013 (Fig. 13) was uncovered in the northern part of the trench, on the right side of the stream, between feature 1-XV-2013 (see above) and the north edge of the trench. It was a rectilinear fence, 3.6 m long, built of vertical planks, split troughs, and channelled pieces, pushed into the mud down to the rock salt massif. Three fragments of the troughs from the fence were dendrochronologically dated to the period between 996 and 980 BC. Feature 1-XV-2015 (Fig. 14) was uncovered in the central-southern part of the trench. It was a corridor, 2.5 m long and 1 m wide, oriented E – W, made of two parallel rectilinear alignments of massive upright poles driven into the mud. One of its poles was at the same time part of the fence of the Feature 1-XV-2013. The corridor, on the base of three samples, has been radiocarbon-dated between 2870±32 and 2718±30 BP. Feature 1-XV-2018 (Fig. 15-17) was partially uncovered in the north-west part of the trench, about 3.5 m west of the stream. It is a 5 m long fence, oriented S – N, made of vertical planks, stakes (Fig. 17/2), and a split trough (Fig. 17/1), stuck into the mud, and four horizontal planks linking them to each other (Fig.17/2). Not dated. Feature 2-XV-2018 (Fig. 18; 19/1) was partially uncovered in the western part of the trench, in the rock salt massif. It is a roundish pit (over 2.5 x 1.8 m) with irregular edges, ca. 1.7 m deep below the salt massif surface. Not dated. Feature 3-XV-2018 (Fig. 19; 20) was uncovered in the central part of the trench. It was a ditch dug in the salt massif, 0.4 to 0.8 m wide, over 0.9 m deep, and about 4 m long. It cuts through the bottom of feature 1-XV-2013 (Fig. 12/2) and links it to the feature 2-XV-2018. Not dated. Feature 4-XV-2018 (Fig. 19/1; 20-22) was uncovered in the south-east corner of the trench, covering about 4 x 4 m, and consisted of a cluster of parallel beams laying on the salt massif, and a few vertical poles. The feature continues eastwards and southwards beyond the sides of the trench. On the base of three samples, it was radiocarbon-dated between 2856±31 and 2817±30 BP. Artifacts. We found some 100 artifacts in Trench S.XV during the excavation seasons, between 2016 and 2019. Most of them were made of wood, 1 of hemp (?), and 3 of stone (basalt). The wooden artifacts include 31 component pieces and fragments of trough bodies (Fig. 24-27), 17 channelled pieces (Fig. 28-30), 2 shovels (Fig. 33), 12 paddles (Fig. 31; 32), 4 mallets (Fig. 34/2,3), an L-shaped haft for a socketedaxe (Fig. 34/1), 2 pans (Fig. 35), a bowl (Fig. 36), fragments of 2 ladders (Fig. 37), 3 knife-shaped tools (Fig. 38/2,3), 11 rods with pointed end (Fig. 38/4), 4 loops made of twisted twigs (Fig. 40), a massive rope made of three twisted threads (Clematis vitalba) (Fig. 41), and 5 wedges. One of the artifacts found was made of plant material, possibly hemp: a small twisted cord (it may come from a peg inserted in the trough hole). Stone (basalt) artifacts include 2 mining hammers (mining tools) with engraved grooves aimed to fix the bindings (Fig. 44/1,3), an ovoid-shaped object with many percussion marks at its thicker end (Fig. 44/2). The chronology of the finds. In 2018 4 samples (wattle) from the Feature 1-XV-2013 were dated at Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art / Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. In 2019 some of the timber features (1-XV-2015 and 4-XV-2018) and wooden artifacts (the ladder, the troughs nos. 4 and 5 and some others) were radiocarbon dated by “Horia Hulubei” National Institute for Research and Development in Physics and Nuclear Engineering. Most of the dates fall between 1000 – 900 cal BC. Just one date (a wooden bowl) falls between ca. 1419-1262 cal BC (Tabels 1, 2, 3). The structures and most of the artifacts uncovered in S.XV date to ca. XI-IX centuries cal BC and seem to have been part of a complex production system aimed at brine and rock salt processing. Differential distribution of finds across the site. The research has revealed differential distribution of finds across the site. Thus, the evidence dating to ca. 2300 – 2000 cal BC (a pit dug in the rock massif and pottery), 1600 – 1400 cal BC (a wattle-built structure and wooden troughs), and 400 – 180 cal BC (timber-lined shaft, a wooden ladder and pottery) is mainly concentrated in the southern sector of the site. In exchange, the finds dating to ca. 1400 – 1100 cal BC have mainly been uncovered in the south-central part of the site (timber structures) and northern part of the site (pottery). The evidence dating to about 1050 – 850 cal BC covers two distinct areas: the south-central and northern sectors of the site. While about thirty fragmented troughs have been found in the south-central sector, no one object of this kind has been found in the northern sector. There are also differences concerning the timber structures between these sectors of the site. These strongly suggest that in XI – IX centuries cal BC, at least two different and complementary production areas were active in the site. Salt production experiments. The experiments on salt production, using faithful replicas of Late Bronze Age artifacts uncovered in trenches S.I and S.XV – troughs, channelled pieces, mallets, wedges, stone mining hammers, etc. – aimed to obtain from the different source material – rock salt massif, brine, and mud – various forms of salt: lumps of rock salt, fine salt, and highly concentrated and pure brine. The experiments showed the technical validity of several techniques. The most effective were as follows: 1. Detaching lumps of rock salt from the massif. By means of jets of fresh water directed with the troughs (along the twisted cords fitted in the perforations of the sticks that went through the pegs which were fixed in the holes at the base of the trough) depressions were simultaneously created in the rock salt at ten to twenty spots, 10 to 15 cm apart and 7 to 12 cm deep. This process took few hours (Fig. 45/1). It was noticed that each hole generated one to three cracks in the salt massif, around 1 m long and 5 to 10 cm deep. The holes and cracks allowed the insertion of wooden wedges. By hitting them with heavy wooden mallets, the wedges were pushed down to ca. 20 cm deep. Finally, using hooked sticks, many blocks of rock salt could be detached from the massif. The larger blocks were easily broken by stone hammers (mining tools). 2. Producing small pieces of salt and fine salt from the rock salt massif. The first stages of the process were identical to the previously described. After the holes and cracks were created, the rock salt mass was beaten with stone hammers (mining tools) along the cracks and holes, so that small pieces of salt, as well as wet and soft fine salt, were easily separated from the mass. Thus, about 50 kilograms of fine salt were collected in 30 minutes during the experiment (Fig. 45/2). 3. Boiling brine in the troughs with hot stones and drawing off the brine. Stones heated as much as possible in a fire were immersed in the brine with which the trough was filled, thus bringing it to the boil (Fig. 46). The boiling continued until the salt begun to crystallize. After that, the trough, full of highly concentrated brine, was left motionless for several hours. The insoluble impurities of the brine sedimented according to their specific weight: the lightest of them floated to the top, while the heaviest (metals and minerals) settled on the bottom. Above the sediment lying on the bottom of the trough and under that at the top remained a rather thick layer of fairly clean brine. During the experiments, the lower sediment has never reached 3 cm in thickness. The wider tops of the plugs that were inserted into the holes found at the bottom of the trough, were at least 3 cm high. Because of this, the upper edges of the plugs remained above the sediment on the bottom of the trough. We then slightly raised the long sticks that were tightly inserted into the axial holes of the plugs, which in turn tightly closed the holes in the trough’s bottom. The sticks were fixed and maintained in a slightly raised position by a kind of pliers – half split twigs – set transversely over the trough opening. In this way, the brine was allowed to drain easily into channelled pieces set under the trough. The brine then flowed through the channelled pieces to the next trough(s). The process could be repeated in the next trough(s) until the salt makers would get a fairly clean and highly concentrated brine. Ethnographic survey. Băile Figa and its surroundings are places where the evidence for ethnographic research, of what is commonly called ‘the traditional salt civilization’, can still be found. In every ancient salt production archaeological site known in Romania, without any exception, the current folk salt exploitation is still in progress. The latter offers to these sites a valuable research potential, almost unique in Europe, for the ethnoarchaeological research. The ethnographic survey has attested a number of aspects of the present-day folk ways of exploiting brine, rock salt, salt mud, and halophytic vegetation, as well as other traditional practices and customs related to these resources. Brine folk exploitation. The most exploited saline occurrence at Băile Figa is currently brine. Brine is taken directly from the numerous springs filling the central salty stream valley (Fig. 48/1). Then, it is loaded into plastic drums of 50 to 200 litres and transported by carts to the neighbouring villages (Fig. 48/2). The locals told us that, in the past, the brine was transported in large, cone-shaped barrels, called “bote mari”, of 60 litres, made of softwood boards connected to each other with circles of hazel twigs (Fig. 49/5), in smaller containers, of approx. 20 litres, called “barbânțe” (Fig. 49/3), as well as in smaller containers hollowed out of tree trunks and called “bote” (Fig. 49/2). The most remote localities, to which the brine from Băile Figa is transported, are situated at a distance of 11 km. But most people that currently get brine from Băile Figa live within a maximum perimeter of 6 km. Brine is mainly used for preserving meat, bacon (especially around the winter holidays), and vegetables. Sometimes the brine is used for health care purposes, mainly against colds, rheumatic pains, skin diseases or circulatory deficiencies, either on the spot or at home. In the 1960s and 1970s, the locals built two brine ponds and used them for health cure baths. Rock salt folk exploitation. According to some elderly locals, until 1989, the rock salt was periodically extracted at Băile Figa, by manual or mechanized digging of vertical pits. It was mainly used to supplement the feed of domestic animals in the individual households, sheepfolds (Fig. 50) and collective farms or state agricultural enterprises. Sometimes, the locals crushed and grinded salt lumps. In some households in the village of Figa, we have identified and documented some primitive millstones used in salt grinding (Fig. 49/1). Ground salt is added to animal feed and very rarely in human food, people being sure that this kind of salt can harm their health. Sapropelic mud folk exploitation. The ethnographic surveys have documented the traditional exploitation of sapropelic mud at Băile Figa. It is found only in some limited spots of the salt stream valley. The spots with small deposits of sapropelic mud are known only by “connoisseurs” who, among the clues, are guided by a specific smell. The sapropelic mud is used for health care purposes, especially for the treatment of rheumatic diseases. The mud is applied, either on most of the body or only on the parts affected by pain. Sometimes, the mud is applied to animal wounds, for disinfection and drying. Mud-based treatments are done both on-site and at home. Shepherding. Until the building, during 2007 – 2011, of the leisure resort, Băile Figa was the favourite place for grazing for the local domestic animals (sheep, cows, buffaloes, and horses). The animals, according to the information delivered by the shepherds, loved salt grass and brine (Fig. 49/2). Shepherds tried to prevent the animals from drinking brine from the springs because their fondness of the salty taste made them to drink it in unhealthy quantities, so that they could “swell” and die. Beekeeping. In the northern sector of the salt stream valley, at the surface of the soil, in the summer of 2018, a primitive beehive made of a hollowed-out oak trunk was discovered (Fig. 48/4). So far, as we can know, it is a unique find of this sort in a saline context.

The traditional German tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin inhabits an ambiguous narrative borderland, a liminal space between fact and fiction, fantasy and horror, concrete details and elusive mystery. In his study of the Pied Piper in Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature, Wolfgang Mieder describes how manuscripts and other evidence appear to confirm the historical base of the story. Precise details from a fifteenth-century manuscript, based on earlier sources, specify that in 1284 on the 26th of June, the feast-day of Saints John and Paul, 130 children from Hamelin were led away by a piper clothed in many colours to the Koppen Hill, and there vanished (Mieder 48). Later manuscripts add details familiar today, such as a plague of rats and a broken bargain with burghers as a motive for the Piper’s actions, while in the seventeenth century the first English-language version advances what might also be the first attempt at a “rational” explanation for the children’s disappearance, claiming that they were taken to Transylvania. The uncommon pairing of such precise factual detail with enigmatic mystery has encouraged many theories. These have ranged from references to the Children’s Crusade, or other religious fervours, to the devastation caused by the Black Death, from the colonisation of Romania by young German migrants to a murderous rampage by a paedophile. Fictional interpretations of the story have multiplied, with the classic versions of the Brothers Grimm and Robert Browning being most widely known, but with contemporary creators exploring the theme too. This includes interpretations in Hamelin itself. On 26 June 2015, in Hamelin Museum, I watched a wordless five-minute play, entirely performed not by humans but by animatronic stylised figures built out of scrap iron, against a montage of multilingual, confused voices and eerie music, with the vanished children represented by a long line of small empty shirts floating by. The uncanny, liminal nature of the story was perfectly captured. Australia is a world away from German fairy tale mysteries, historically, geographically, and culturally. Yet, as Lisa M. Fiander has persuasively argued, contemporary Australian fiction has been more influenced by fairy tales than might be assumed, and in this essay it is proposed that major motifs from the Pied Piper appear in several Australian novels, transformed not only by distance of setting and time from that of the original narrative, but also by elements specific to the Australian imaginative space. These motifs are lost children, the enigmatic figure of the Piper himself, and the power of a very particular place (as Hamelin and its Koppen Hill are particularised in the original tale). Three major Australian novels will be examined in this essay: Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), Christopher Koch’s The Doubleman (1985), and Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Golden Day (2011). Dubosarsky’s novel was written for children; both Koch’s and Lindsay’s novels were published as adult fiction. In each of these works of fiction, the original tale’s motifs have been developed and transformed to express unique evocations of the Pied Piper theme. As noted by Fiander, fiction writers are “most likely to draw upon fairy tales when they are framing, in writing, a subject that generates anxiety in their culture” (158). Her analysis is about anxieties of place within Australian fiction, but this insight could be usefully extended to the motifs which I have identified as inherent in the Pied Piper story. Prominent among these is the lost children motif, whose importance in the Australian imagination has been well-established by scholars such as Peter Pierce. Pierce’s The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety explores this preoccupation from the earliest beginnings of European settlement, through analysis of fiction, newspaper reports, paintings, and films. As Pierce observed in a later interview in the Sydney Morning Herald (Knox), over time the focus changed from rural children and the nineteenth-century fear of the vast impersonal nature of the bush, where children of colonists could easily get lost, to urban children and the contemporary fear of human predators.In each of the three novels under examination in this essay, lost children—whether literal or metaphorical—feature prominently. Writer Carmel Bird, whose fiction has also frequently centred on the theme of the lost child, observes in “Dreaming the Place” that the lost child, the stolen child – this must be a narrative that is lodged in the heart and imagination, nightmare and dream, of all human beings. In Australia the nightmare became reality. The child is the future, and if the child goes, there can be no future. The true stories and the folk tales on this theme are mirror images of each other. (7) The motif of lost children—and of children in danger—is not unique to the Pied Piper. Other fairy tales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, contain it, and it is those antecedents which Bird cites in her essay. But within the Pied Piper story it has three features which distinguish it from other traditional tales. First, unlike in the classic versions of Hansel and Gretel or Red Riding Hood, the children do not return. Neither are there bodies to find. The children have vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. Second, it is not only parents who have lost them, but an entire community whose future has been snatched away: a community once safe, ordered, even complacent, traumatised by loss. The lack of hope, of a happy ending for anyone, is striking. And thirdly, the children are not lost or abandoned or even, strictly speaking, stolen: they are lured away, semi-willingly, by the central yet curiously marginal figure of the Piper himself. In the original story there is no mention of motive and no indication of malice on the part of the Piper. There is only his inexplicable presence, a figure out of fairy folklore appearing in the midst of concrete historical dates and numbers. Clearly, he links to the liminal, complex world of the fairies, found in folklore around the world—beings from a world close to the human one, yet alien. Whimsical and unpredictable by human standards, such beings are nevertheless bound by mysteriously arbitrary rules and taboos, and haunt the borders of the human world, disturbing its rational edges and transforming lives forever. It is this sense of disturbance, that enchanting yet frightening sudden shifting of the border of reality and of the comforting order of things, the essence of transformation itself, which can also be seen at the core of the three novels under examination in this essay, with the Piper represented in each of them but in different ways. The third motif within the Pied Piper is a focus on place as a source of uncanny power, a theme which particularly resonates within an Australian context. Fiander argues that if contemporary British fiction writers use fairy tale to explore questions of community and alienation, and Canadian fiction writers use it to explore questions of identity, then Australian writers use it to explore the unease of place. She writes of the enduring legacy of Australia’s history “as a settler colony which invests the landscape with strangeness for many protagonists” (157). Furthermore, she suggests that “when Australian fiction writers, using fairy tales, describe the landscape as divorced from reality, they might be signalling anxiety about their own connection with the land which had already seen tens of thousands of years of occupation when Captain James Cook ‘found’ it in 1770” (160). I would argue, however, that in the case of the Pied Piper motifs, it is less clear that it is solely settler anxieties which are driving the depiction of the power of place in these three novels. There is no divorce from reality here, but rather an eruption of the metaphysical potency of place within the usual, “normal” order of reality. This follows the pattern of the original tale, where the Piper and all the children, except for one or two stragglers, disappear at Koppen Hill, vanishing literally into the hill itself. In traditional European folklore, hollow hills are associated with fairies and their uncanny power, but other places, especially those of water—springs, streams, even the sea—may also be associated with their liminal world (in the original tale, the River Weser is another important locus for power). In Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, it is another outcrop in the landscape which holds that power and claims the “lost children.” Inspired partly by a painting by nineteenth-century Australian artist William Ford, titled At the Hanging Rock (1875), depicting a group of elegant people picnicking in the bush, this influential novel, which inspired an equally successful film adaptation, revolves around an incident in 1900 when four girls from Appleyard College, an exclusive school in Victoria, disappear with one of their teachers whilst climbing Hanging Rock, where they have gone for a picnic. Only one of their number, a girl called Irma, is ever found, and she has no memory of how and why she found herself on the Rock, and what has happened to the others. This inexplicable event is the precursor to a string of tragedies which leads to the violent deaths of several people, and which transforms the sleepy and apparently content little community around Appleyard College into a centre of loss, horror, and scandal.Told in a way which makes it appear that the novelist is merely recounting a true story—Lindsay even tells readers in an author’s note that they must decide for themselves if it is fact or fiction—Picnic at Hanging Rock shares the disturbingly liminal fact-fiction territory of the Piper tale. Many readers did in fact believe that the novel was based on historical events and combed newspaper files, attempting to propound ingenious “rational” explanations for what happened on the Rock. Picnic at Hanging Rock has been the subject of many studies, with the novel being analysed through various prisms, including the Gothic, the pastoral, historiography, and philosophy. In “Fear and Loathing in the Australian Bush,” Kathleen Steele has depicted Picnic at Hanging Rock as embodying the idea that “Ordered ‘civilisation’ cannot overcome the gothic landscapes of settler imaginations: landscapes where time and people disappear” (44). She proposes that Lindsay intimates that the landscape swallows the “lost children” of the novel because there is a great absence in that place: that of Aboriginal people. In this reading of the novel, it is that absence which becomes, in a sense, a malevolent presence that will reach out beyond the initial disappearance of the three people on the Rock to destroy the bonds that held the settler community together. It is a powerfully-made argument, which has been taken up by other scholars and writers, including studies which link the theme of the novel with real-life lost-children cases such as that of Azaria Chamberlain, who disappeared near another “Rock” of great Indigenous metaphysical potency—Uluru, or Ayers Rock. However, to date there has been little exploration of the fairy tale quality of the novel, and none at all of the striking ways in which it evokes Pied Piper motifs, whilst transforming them to suit the exigencies of its particular narrative world. The motif of lost children disappearing from an ordered, safe, even complacent community into a place of mysterious power is extended into an exploration of the continued effects of those disappearances, depicting the disastrous impact on those left behind and the wider community in a way that the original tale does not. There is no literal Pied Piper figure in this novel, though various theories are evoked by characters as to who might have lured the girls and their teacher, and who might be responsible for the disappearances. Instead, there is a powerful atmosphere of inevitability and enchantment within the landscape itself which both illustrates the potency of place, and exemplifies the Piper’s hold on his followers. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, place and Piper are synonymous: the Piper has been transformed into the land itself. Yet this is not the “vast impersonal bush,” nor is it malevolent or vengeful. It is a living, seductive metaphysical presence: “Everything, if only you could see it clearly enough, is beautiful and complete . . .” (Lindsay 35). Just as in the original tale, the lost children follow the “Piper” willingly, without regret. Their disappearance is a happiness to them, in that moment, as it is for the lost children of Hamelin, and quite unlike how it must be for those torn apart by that loss—the community around Appleyard, the townspeople of Hamelin. Music, long associated with fairy “takings,” is also a subtle feature of the story. In the novel, just before the luring, Irma hears a sound like the beating of far-off drums. In the film, which more overtly evokes fairy tale elements than does the novel, it is noteworthy that the music at that point is based on traditional tunes for Pan-pipes, played by the great Romanian piper Gheorge Zamfir. The ending of the novel, with questions left unanswered, and lives blighted by the forever-inexplicable, may be seen as also following the trajectory of the original tale. Readers as much as the fictional characters are left with an enigma that continues to perplex and inspire. Picnic at Hanging Rock was one of the inspirations for another significant Australian fiction, this time a contemporary novel for children. Ursula Dubosarsky’s The Golden Day (2011) is an elegant and subtle short novel, set in Sydney at an exclusive girls’ school, in 1967. Like the earlier novel, The Golden Day is also partly inspired by visual art, in this case the Schoolgirl series of paintings by Charles Blackman. Combining a fairy tale atmosphere with historical details—the Vietnam War, the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the drowning of Harold Holt—the story is told through the eyes of several girls, especially one, known as Cubby. The Golden Day echoes the core narrative patterns of the earlier novel, but intriguingly transformed: a group of young girls goes with their teacher on an outing to a mysterious place (in this case, a cave on the beach—note the potent elements of rock and water, combined), and something inexplicable happens which results in a disappearance. Only this time, the girls are much younger than the characters of Lindsay’s novel, pre-pubertal in fact at eleven years old, and it is their teacher, a young, idealistic woman known only as Miss Renshaw, who disappears, apparently into thin air, with only an amber bead from her necklace ever found. But it is not only Miss Renshaw who vanishes: the other is a poet and gardener named Morgan who is also Miss Renshaw’s secret lover. Later, with the revelation of a dark past, he is suspected in absentia of being responsible for Miss Renshaw’s vanishment, with implications of rape and murder, though her body is never found. Morgan, who could partly figure as the Piper, is described early on in the novel as having “beautiful eyes, soft, brown, wet with tears, like a stuffed toy” (Dubosarsky 11). This disarming image may seem a world away from the ambiguously disturbing figure of the legendary Piper, yet not only does it fit with the children’s naïve perception of the world, it also echoes the fact that the children in the original story were not afraid of the Piper, but followed him willingly. However, that is complicated by the fact that Morgan does not lure the children; it is Miss Renshaw who follows him—and the children follow her, who could be seen as the other half of the Piper. The Golden Day similarly transforms the other Piper motifs in its own original way. The children are only literally lost for a short time, when their teacher vanishes and they are left to make their own way back from the cave; yet it could be argued that metaphorically, the girls are “lost” to childhood from that moment, in terms of never being able to go back to the state of innocence in which they were before that day. Their safe, ordered school community will never be the same again, haunted by the inexplicability of the events of that day. Meanwhile, the exploration of Australian place—the depiction of the Memorial Gardens where Miss Renshaw enjoins them to write poetry, the uncomfortable descent over rocks to the beach, and the fateful cave—is made through the eyes of children, not the adolescents and adults of Picnic at Hanging Rock. The girls are not yet in that liminal space which is adolescence and so their impressions of what the places represent are immediate, instinctive, yet confused. They don’t like the cave and can’t wait to get out of it, whereas the beach inspires them with a sense of freedom and the gardens with a sense of enchantment. But in each place, those feelings are mixed both with ordinary concerns and with seemingly random associations that are nevertheless potently evocative. For example, in the cave, Cubby senses a threateningly weightless atmosphere, a feeling of reality shifting, which she associates, apparently confusedly, with the hanging of Ronald Ryan, reported that very day. In this way, Dubosarsky subtly gestures towards the sinister inevitability of the following events, and creates a growing tension that will eventually fade but never fully dissipate. At the end, the novel takes an unexpected turn which is as destabilising as the ending of the Pied Piper story, and as open-ended in its transformative effects as the original tale: “And at that moment Cubby realised she was not going to turn into the person she had thought she would become. There was something inside her head now that would make her a different person, though she scarcely understood what it was” (Dubosarsky 148). The eruption of the uncanny into ordinary life will never leave her now, as it will never leave the other girls who followed Miss Renshaw and Morgan into the literally hollow hill of the cave and emerged alone into a transformed world. It isn’t just childhood that Cubby has lost but also any possibility of a comforting sense of the firm borders of reality. As in the Pied Piper, ambiguity and loss combine to create questions which cannot be logically answered, only dimly apprehended.Christopher Koch’s 1985 novel The Doubleman, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, also explores the power of place and the motif of lost children, but unlike the other two novels examined in this essay depicts an actual “incarnated” Piper motif in the mysteriously powerful figure of Clive Broderick, brilliant guitarist and charismatic teacher/guru, whose office, significantly, is situated in a subterranean space of knowledge—a basement room beneath a bookshop. Both central yet peripheral to the main action of the novel, touched with hints of the supernatural which never veer into overt fantasy, Broderick remains an enigma to the end. Set, like The Golden Day, in the 1960s, The Doubleman is narrated in the first person by Richard Miller, in adulthood a producer of a successful folk-rock group, the Rymers, but in childhood an imaginative, troubled polio survivor, with a crutch and a limp. It is noteworthy here that in the Grimms’ version of the Pied Piper, two children are left behind, despite following the Piper: one is blind, one is lame. And it is the lame boy who tells the townspeople what he glimpsed at Koppen Hill. In creating the character of Broderick, the author blends the traditional tropes of the Piper figure with Mephistophelian overtones and a strong influence from fairy lore, specifically the idea of the “doubleman,” here drawn from the writings of seventeenth-century Scottish pastor, the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle. Kirk’s 1691 book The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies is the earliest known serious attempt at objective description of the fairy beliefs of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. His own precisely dated life-story and ambiguous end—it is said he did not die but is forever a prisoner of the fairies—has eerie parallels to the Piper story. “And there is the uncanny, powerful and ambiguous fact of the matter. Here is a man, named, born, lived, who lived a fairy story, really lived it: and in the popular imagination, he lives still” (Masson).Both in his creative and his non-fiction work Koch frequently evoked what he called “the Otherland,” which he depicted as a liminal, ambiguous, destabilising but nevertheless very real and potent presence only thinly veiled by the everyday world. This Otherland is not the same in all his fictions, but is always part of an actual place, whether that be Java in The Year of Living Dangerously, Hobart and Sydney in The Doubleman, Tasmania, Vietnam and Cambodia in Highways to a War, and Ireland and Tasmania in Out of Ireland. It is this sense of the “Otherland” below the surface, a fairy tale, mythical realm beyond logic or explanation, which gives his work its distinctive and particular power. And in The Doubleman, this motif, set within a vividly evoked real world, complete with precise period detail, transforms the Piper figure into one which could easily appear in a Hobart lane, yet which loses none of its uncanny potency. As Noel Henricksen writes in his study of Koch’s work, Island and Otherland, “Behind the membrane of Hobart is Otherland, its manifestations a spectrum stretched between the mystical and the spiritually perverted” (213).This is Broderick’s first appearance, described through twelve-year-old Richard Miller’s eyes: Tall and thin in his long dark overcoat, he studied me for the whole way as he approached, his face absolutely serious . . . The man made me uneasy to a degree for which there seemed to be no explanation . . . I was troubled by the notion that he was no ordinary man going to work at all: that he was not like other people, and that his interest couldn’t be explained so simply. (Koch, Doubleman 3)That first encounter is followed by another, more disturbing still, when Broderick speaks to the boy, eyes fixed on him: “. . . hooded by drooping lids, they were entirely without sympathy, yet nevertheless interested, and formidably intelligent” (5).The sense of danger that Broderick evokes in the boy could be explained by a sinister hint of paedophilia. But though Broderick is a predator of sorts on young people, nothing is what it seems; no rational explanation encompasses the strange effect of his presence. It is not until Richard is a young man, in the company of his musical friend Brian Brady, that he comes across Broderick again. The two young men are looking in the window of a music shop, when Broderick appears beside them, and as Richard observes, just as in a fairy tale, “He didn’t seem to have changed or aged . . .” (44). But the shock of his sudden re-appearance is mixed with something else now, as Broderick engages Brady in conversation, ignoring Richard, “. . . as though I had failed some test, all that time ago, and the man had no further use for me” (45).What happens next, as Broderick demonstrates his musical prowess, becomes Brady’s teacher, and introduces them to his disciple, young bass player Darcy Burr, will change the young men’s lives forever and set them on a path that leads both to great success and to living nightmare, even after Broderick’s apparent disappearance, for Burr will take on the Piper’s mantle. Koch’s depiction of the lost children motif is distinctively different to the other two novels examined in this essay. Their fate is not so much a mystery as a tragedy and a warning. The lost children of The Doubleman are also lost children of the sixties, bright, talented young people drawn through drugs, immersive music, and half-baked mysticism into darkness and horrifying violence. In his essay “California Dreaming,” published in the collection Crossing the Gap, Koch wrote about this subterranean aspect of the sixties, drawing a connection between it and such real-life sinister “Pipers” as Charles Manson (60). Broderick and Burr are not the same as the serial killer Manson, of course; but the spell they cast over the “lost children” who follow them is only different in degree, not in kind. In the end of the novel, the spell is broken and the world is again transformed. Yet fittingly it is a melancholy transformation: an end of childhood dreams of imaginative potential, as well as dangerous illusions: “And I knew now that it was all gone—like Harrigan Street, and Broderick, and the district of Second-Hand” (Koch, Doubleman 357). The power of place, the last of the Piper motifs, is also deeply embedded in The Doubleman. In fact, as with the idea of Otherland, place—or Island, as Henricksen evocatively puts it—is a recurring theme in Koch’s work. He identified primarily and specifically as a Tasmanian writer rather than as simply Australian, pointing out in an essay, “The Lost Hemisphere,” that because of its landscape and latitude, different to the mainland of Australia, Tasmania “genuinely belongs to a different region from the continent” (Crossing the Gap 92). In The Doubleman, Richard Miller imbues his familiar and deeply loved home landscape with great mystical power, a power which is both inherent within it as it is, but also expressive of the Otherland. In “A Tasmanian Tone,” another essay from Crossing the Gap, Koch describes that tone as springing “from a sense of waiting in the landscape: the tense yet serene expectancy of some nameless revelation” (118). But Koch could also write evocatively of landscapes other than Tasmanian ones. The unnerving climax of The Doubleman takes place in Sydney—significantly, as in The Golden Day, in a liminal, metaphysically charged place of rocks and water. That place, which is real, is called Point Piper. In conclusion, the original tale’s three main motifs—lost children, the enigma of the Piper, and the power of place—have been explored in distinctive ways in each of the three novels examined in this article. Contemporary Australia may be a world away from medieval Germany, but the uncanny liminality and capacious ambiguity of the Pied Piper tale has made it resonate potently within these major Australian fictions. Transformed and transformative within the Australian imagination, the theme of the Pied Piper threads like a faintly-heard snatch of unearthly music through the apparently mimetic realism of the novels, destabilising readers’ expectations and leaving them with subversively unanswered questions. ReferencesBird, Carmel. “Dreaming the Place: An Exploration of Antipodean Narratives.” Griffith Review 42 (2013). 1 May 2016 <https://griffithreview.com/articles/dreaming-the-place/>.Dubosarsky, Ursula. The Golden Day. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2011.Fiander, Lisa M. “Writing in A Fairy Story Landscape: Fairy Tales and Contemporary Australian Fiction.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 2 (2003). 30 April 2016 <http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/index>.Henricksen, Noel. Island and Otherland: Christopher Koch and His Books. Melbourne: Educare, 2003.Knox, Malcolm. “A Country of Lost Children.” Sydney Morning Herald 15 Aug. 2009. 1 May 2016 <http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-country-of-lost-children-20090814-el8d.html>.Koch, Christopher. The Doubleman. 1985. Sydney: Minerva, 1996.Koch, Christopher. Crossing the Gap: Memories and Reflections. 1987. Sydney: Vintage, 2000. Lindsay, Joan. Picnic at Hanging Rock. 1967. Melbourne: Penguin, 1977.Masson, Sophie. “Captive in Fairyland: The Strange Case of Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle.” Nation and Federation in the Celtic World: Papers from the Fourth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies, University of Sydney, June–July 2001. Ed. Pamela O’Neil. Sydney: University of Sydney Celtic Studies Foundation, 2003. Mieder, Wolfgang. “The Pied Piper: Origin, History, and Survival of a Legend.” Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature. 1987. London: Routledge Revivals, 2015.Pierce, Peter. The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Steele, Kathleen. “Fear and Loathing in the Australian Bush: Gothic Landscapes in Bush Studies and Picnic at Hanging Rock.” Colloquy 20 (2010): 33–56. 27 July 2016 <http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/wp-content/arts/files/colloquy/colloquy_issue_20_december_2010/steele.pdf>.

In the last three years a new filthy vocabulary of social class has emerged in Britain. The word “chav”, and its various synonyms and regional variations, has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for white working class subjects. An entire slang vocabulary has emerged around chav. Acronyms, such as “Council Housed and Vile” have sprung up to explain the term. Folk etymologies and some scholarly sources suggest that the term chav might derive from a distortion of a Romany word for a child, while others suggests it is a derivative of the term charver, long used in the North East of England to describe the disenfranchised white poor (see Nayak). In current parlance, the term chav is aligned “with stereotypical notions of lower-class” and is above all “a term of intense class-based abhorrence” (Haywood and Yar 16). Routinely demonized within news media, television comedy programmes, and internet sites (such as the chavscum) the level of disgust mobilized by the figure of the chav is suggestive of a heightened class antagonism that marks a new episode of class struggle in Britain. Social class is often represented through highly caricatured figures—the toff, the chav—figures that are referred to in highly emotive terms. One of the ways in which social class is emotionally mediated is through repeated expressions of disgust at the habits and behaviour of those deemed to belong to a lower social class. An everyday definition of disgust would be: an emotion experienced and expressed as a sickening feeling of revulsion, loathing, or nausea. The physicality of disgust reactions means that the communication of disgust draws heavily on metaphors of sensation. As William Miller notes, disgust “needs images of bad taste, foul smells, creepy touchings, ugly sights, bodily secretions and excretions to articulate the judgments it asserts” (218). Our disgust reactions are often revealing of wider social power relations. As Sara Ahmed notes: When thinking about how bodies become objects of disgust, we can see that disgust is crucial to power relations. … Disgust at “that which is below” functions to maintain the power relations between above and below, through which “aboveness” and “belowness” become properties of particular bodies, objects and spaces (89). Ahmed’s account of the connection between disgust and power relations echoes Beverly Skeggs’ influential account of “class making”. As Skeggs suggests, class as a concept, and as a process of classification and social positioning, is not pre-given but is always in production and is continually re-figured (3). Social class virtually disappeared as a central site of analysis within cultural and media studies in the late 1980s, a disappearance that was mirrored by a similar retreat from the taxonomy of class within wider social and political discourse (Skeggs 45). This is not to say that class distinctions, however we measure them, have been eroded or are in decline. On the contrary, class disappeared as a central site of analysis at precisely the same time that “economic polarization” reached “unparalleled depths” in Britain (ibid.). As the term “working class” has been incrementally emptied of meaning, teaching and researching issues of class inequality is now often seen as “paranoid” and felt to be embarrassing and shameful (see Sayer). (Roland Barthes uses the concept of ‘ex-nomination’ to explain how (and why) social class is emptied of meaning in this way. According to Barthes, this process is one of the central mechanisms through which dominant classes naturalise their values.) In the last two decades academics from working class backgrounds and, perhaps most perversely, those who work within disciplines that were founded upon research on class, have increasingly experienced their own class origins as a “filthy secret”. If social class “directly articulated” and as “the object of analysis, has largely disappeared” (Skeggs 46) within the academy and within wider social and political discourses, portrayals of class differences have nevertheless persisted within popular media. In particular, the emergence of the grotesque and comic figure of the chav within a range of contemporary British media, primarily television comedy, reality-genre television, Internet forums and newspapers, has made class differences and antagonisms explicitly visible in contemporary Britain. Class-based discrimination and open snobbery is made socially acceptable through claims that this vicious name-calling has a ‘satirical’ function. Laughing at something is “an act of expulsion” that closely resembles the rejecting movement of disgust reactions (Menninghaus 11). In the case of laughter at those of a lower class, laughter is boundary-forming; it creates a distance between “them” and “us”, and asserts moral judgments and a higher class position. Laughter at chavs is a way of managing and authorizing class disgust, contempt, and anxiety. Popular media can be effective means of communicating class disgust and in so doing, work to produce ‘class communities’ in material, political and affective senses. In the online vocabulary of chav hate, we can further discern the ways in which class disgust is performed in ways that are community-forming. The web site, urbandictionary.com is an online slang dictionary that functions as an unofficial online authority on English language slang. Urbandictionary.com is modelled on an internet forum in which (unregistered) users post definitions of new or existing slang terms, which are then reviewed by volunteer editors. Users vote on definitions by clicking a thumb up or thumb down icon and posts are then ranked according to the votes they have accrued. Urbandictionary currently hosts 300,000 definitions of slang terms and is ranked as one of the 2000 highest web traffic sites in the world. There were 368 definitions of the term chav posted on the site at the time of writing and I have extracted below a small number of indicative phrases taken from some of the most highly ranked posts. all chavs are filth chavs …. the cancer of the United Kingdom filthy, disgusting, dirty, loud, ugly, stupid arseholes that threaten, fight, cause trouble, impregnate 14 year olds, ask for money, ask for fags, ….steal your phones, wear crap sports wear, drink cheap cider and generally spread their hate. A social underclass par excellence. The absolute dregs of modern civilization The only good chav is dead one. The only thing better than that is a mass grave full of dead chavs and a 24 hour work crew making way for more… This disgust speech generates a set of effects, which adhere to and produce the filthy figure and qualities of chav. The dictionary format is significant here because, like the accompanying veneer of irony, it grants a strange authority to the dehumanising bigotry of the posts. Urbandictionary illustrates how class disgust is actively made through repetition. Through the repetition of disgust reactions, the negative properties attributed to chav make this figure materialize as representative of a group who embodies those disgusting qualities – a group who are “lower than human or civil life” (Ahmed 97). As users add to and build the definition of “the chav” within the urban dictionary site, they interact with one another and a conversational environment emerges. The voting system works on this site as a form of peer authorization that encourages users to invoke more and more intense and affective disgust reactions. As Ngai suggests, disgust involves an expectation of concurrence, and disgust reactions seek “to include or draw others into its exclusion of its object, enabling a strange kind of sociability” (336). This sociability has a particular specificity within online communities in which anonymity gives community members license to express their disgust in extreme and virulent ways. The interactivity of these internet forums, and the real and illusory immediacy they transmit, makes online forums intensely affective communal spaces/places within which disgust reactions can be rapidly shared and accrued. As the web becomes more “writable”, through the development and dissemination of shared annotation software, web users are moving from consuming content to creating it ‘in the form of discussion boards, weblogs, wikis, and other collaborative and conversational media” (Golder 2). Within new media spaces such as urbandictionary, we are not only viewers but active users who can go into, enter and affect representational spaces and places. In the case of chavs, users can not only read about them, but have the power to produce the chav as a knowable figure. The chav thread on urbandictionary and similar chav hate forums work to constitute materially the exaggerated excessive corporeality of the chav figure. These are spaces/places in which class disgust is actively generated – class live. With each new post, there is an accruement of disgust. Each post breathes life into the squalid and thrillingly affective imaginary body of the filthy chav. Class disgust is intimately tied to issues of racial difference. These figures constitute an unclean “sullied urban “underclass”“, “forever placed at the borders of whiteness as the socially excluded, the economically redundant” (Nayak 82, 102-3). Whilst the term chav is a term of abuse directed almost exclusively towards the white poor, chavs are not invisible normative whites, but rather hypervisible “filthy whites”. In a way that bears striking similarities to US white trash figure, and the Australian figure of the Bogan, the chav figure foregrounds a dirty whiteness – a whiteness contaminated with poverty. This borderline whiteness is evidenced through claims that chavs appropriate black American popular culture through their clothing, music, and forms of speech, and have geographical, familial and sexual intimacy with working class blacks and Asians. This intimacy is represented by the areas in which chavs live and their illegitimate mixed race children as well as, more complexly, by their filthy white racism. Metaphors of disease, invasion and excessive breeding that are often invoked within white racist responses to immigrants and ethnic minorities are mobilized by the white middle-class in order to differentiate their “respectable whiteness” from the whiteness of the lower class chavs (see Nayak 84). The process of making white lower class identity filthy is an attempt to differentiate between respectable and non-respectable forms of whiteness (and an attempt to abject the white poor from spheres of white privilege). Disgust reactions work not only to give meaning to the figure of the chav but, more complicatedly, constitute a category of being – chav being. So whilst the figures of the chav and chavette have a virtual existence within newspapers, Internet forums and television shows, the chav nevertheless takes symbolic shape in ways that have felt material and physical effects upon those interpellated as “chav”. We can think here of the way in which” signs of chavness”, such as the wearing of certain items or brands of clothing have been increasingly used to police access to public spaces, such as nightclubs and shopping centres since 2003. The figure of the chav becomes a body imbued with negative affect. This affect travels, it circulates and leaks out into public space and shapes everyday perceptual practices. The social policing of chavs foregrounds the disturbing ease with which imagined “emotional qualities slide into corporeal qualities” (Ngai 573). Chav disgust is felt and lived. Experiencing the frisson of acting like a chav has become a major leisure occupation in Britain where middle class students now regularly hold “chav nites”, in which they dress up as chavs and chavettes. These students dress as chavs, carry plastic bags from the cut-price food superstores, drink cider and listen to ‘chav music’, in order to enjoy the affect of being an imaginary chav. In April 2006 the front page of The Sun featured Prince William dressed up as a chav with the headline, “Future Bling of England”, The story details how the future king: “joined in the fun as his platoon donned chav-themed fancy dress to mark the completion of their first term” at Sandhurst military academy. William, we were told, “went to a lot of trouble thinking up what to wear” (white baseball cap, sweatshirt, two gold chains), and was challenged to “put on a chavvy accent and stop speaking like a royal”. These examples of ironic class–passing represent a new era of ‘slumming it’ that recalls the 19th century Victorian slummers, who descended on the East End of London in their many thousands, in pursuit of abject encounters – touristic tastes of the illicit pleasures associated with the immoral, urban poor. This new chav ‘slumming it’ makes no pretence at any moral imperative, it doesn’t pretend to be sociological, there is no “field work”, no ethnography, no gathering of knowledge about the poor, no charity, no reaching out to touch, and no liberal guilt, there is nothing but ‘filthy pleasure’. The cumulative effect of disgust at chavs is the blocking of the disenfranchised white poor from view; they are rendered invisible and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, chav has become an increasingly complex identity category and some of those interpellated as filthy chavs have now reclaimed the term as an affirmative sub-cultural identity. This trans-coding of chav is visible within popular music acts, such as white teenage rapper Lady Sovereign and the acclaimed pop icon and urban poet Mike Skinner (who releases records as The Streets). Journalist Julie Burchill has repeatedly attempted both to defend, and claim for herself, a chav identity and in 2005, the tabloid newspaper The Sun, a propagator of chav hate, ran a ‘Proud to be Chav’ campaign. Nevertheless, this ‘chav pride’ is deceptive, for like the US term ‘white trash’ – now widely adopted within celebrity culture – this ‘pride’ works as an enabling identity category only for those who have acquired enough cultural capital and social mobility to ‘rise above the filth’. Since the publication in English of Julia Kristeva’s Power’s of Horror: An Essay on Abjection in 1982, an entire theoretical paradigm has emerged that celebrates the ‘transgressive’ potential of encounters with filth. Such theoretical ‘abject encounters’ are rarely subversive but are on the contrary an increasingly normative and problematic feature of a media and cultural studies devoid of political direction. Instead of assuming that confrontations with ‘filth’ are ‘necessarily subversive and disruptive’ we need to rethink abjection as a violent exclusionary social force. As Miller notes, ‘disgust does not so much solve the dilemma of social powerlessness as diagnose it powerfully’ (353). Theoretical accounts of media and culture that invoke ‘the transformative potential of filth’ too often marginalize the real dirty politics of inequality. References Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP and New York: Routledge, 2004. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972 [1949]. Birchill, Julie. “Yeah But, No But, Why I’m Proud to Be a Chav.” The Times 18 Feb. 2005. Chav Scum. 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.chavscum.co.uk>. Golder, Scott. “Webbed Footnotes: Collaborative Annotation on the Web.” MA Thesis 2003. 31 Oct. 2006 http://web.media.mit.edu/~golder/projects/webbedfootnotes/ golder-thesis-2005.pdf>. Hayward, Keith, and Majid Yar. “The ‘Chav’ Phenomenon: Consumption, Media and the Construction of a New Underclass.” Crime, Media, Culture 2.1 (2006): 9-28. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Larcombe, Duncan. “Future Bling of England.” The Sun 10 April 2006. Menninghaus, Winfried. Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation. Trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb. State University of New York Press, 2003. Miller, William. The Anatomy of Disgust. Harvard UP, 1998. Nayak, Anoop. Race, Place and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings: Literature, Affect, and Ideology. Harvard UP, Cambridge, 2005. “Proud to be Chav.” The Sun. 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.thesun.co.uk>. Sayer, Andrew. “What Are You Worth? Why Class Is an Embarrassing Subject.” Sociological Research Online 7.3 (2002). 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/7/3/sayer.html>. Skeggs, Beverly. Class, Self and Culture. London. Routledge, 2005. Urbandictionary. “Chav.” 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chav>. Wray, Matt, and Annalee Newitz, eds. White Trash: Race and Class in America. London: Routledge, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Tyler, Imogen. "Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/09-tyler.php>. APA Style Tyler, I. (Nov. 2006) "Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/09-tyler.php>.

I called your producer on the way here in the car because I was very excited. I found out … I did one of those genetic testing things and I found out that I'm 63 percent Irish … I had no idea. I had no idea! I thought I was Scottish and Welsh. It turns out my parents are just full of shit, I guess. But now I’m Irish and it just makes so much sense! I'm a really good drinker. I love St. Patrick's Day. Potatoes are delicious. I'm looking forward to meeting all my cousins … [to Conan O’Brien] You and I are probably related! … Now I get to say things like, “It’s in me genes! I love that Conan O’Brien; he’s such a nice fella.” You’re kinda like a giant leprechaun. (Reese Witherspoon, Tuesday 21 March 2017)IntroductionAs an Irishman and a football fan, I watched the unfolding 2016 UEFA European Championship in France (hereafter ‘Euro 2016’) with a mixture of trepidation and delight. Although the Republic of Ireland team was eventually knocked out of the competition in defeat to the host nation, the players performed extremely well – most notably in defeating Italy 1:0. It is not the on-field performance of the Irish team that interests me in this short article, however, but rather how Irish fans travelling to the competition were depicted in the surrounding international news coverage. In particular, I focus on the centrality of fan footage – shot on smart phones and uploaded to YouTube (in most cases by fans themselves) – in this news coverage. In doing so, I reflect on how sports fans contribute to wider understandings of nationness in the global imagination and how their behaviour is often interpreted (as in the case here) through long-established tropes about people and places. The Media ManifoldTo “depict” something is to represent it in words and pictures. As the contemporary world is largely shaped by and dependent on mass media – and different forms of media have merged (or “converged”) through digital media platforms – mediated forms of depiction have become increasingly important in our lives. On one hand, the constant connectivity made possible in the digital age has made the representation of people and places less controllable, insofar as the information and knowledge about our world circulating through media devices are partly created by ordinary people. On the other hand, traditional broadcast media arguably remain the dominant narrators of people and places worldwide, and their stories, Gerbner reminds us, are largely formula-driven and dramatically charged, and work to “retribalize” modern society. However, a more important point, I suggest, is that so-called new and old media can no longer be thought of as separate and discrete; rather, our attention should focus on the complex interrelations made possible by deep mediatisation (Couldry and Hepp).As an example, consider that the Youtube video of Reese Witherspoon’s recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien chat show – from which the passage at the start of this article is taken – had already been viewed 54,669 times when I first viewed it, a mere 16 hours after it was originally posted. At that point, the televised interview had already been reported on in a variety of international digital news outlets, including rte.ie, independent.ie., nydailynews.com, msn.com, huffingtonpost.com, cote-ivoire.com – and myriad entertainment news sites. In other words, this short interview was consumed synchronously and asynchronously, over a number of different media platforms; it was viewed and reviewed, and critiqued and commented upon, and in turn found itself the subject of news commentary, which fed the ongoing cycle. And yet, it is important to also note that a multiplicity of media interactions does not automatically give rise to oppositional discourse and ideological contestation, as is sometimes assumed. In fact, how ostensibly ‘different’ kinds of media can work to produce a broadly shared construction of a people and place is particularly relevant here. Just as Reese Witherspoon’s interview on the Conan O’Brien show perpetuates a highly stereotypical version of Irishness across a number of platforms, news coverage of Irish fans at Euro 2016 largely conformed to established tropes about Irish people, but this was also fed – to some extent – by Irish fans themselves.Irish Identity, Sport, and the Global ImaginationThere is insufficient space here to describe in any detail the evolving representation of Irish identity, about which a vast literature has developed (nationally and internationally) over the past several decades. As with other varieties of nationness, Irishness has been constructed across a variety of cultural forms, including advertising, art, film, novels, travel brochures, plays and documentaries. Importantly, Irishness has also to a great extent been constructed outside of Ireland (Arrowsmith; Negra).As is well known, the Irish were historically constructed by their colonial masters as a small uncivilised race – as primitive wayward children, prone to “sentimentality, ineffectuality, nervous excitability and unworldliness” (Fanning 33). When pondering the “Celtic nature,” the renowned English poet and cultural critic Mathew Arnold concluded that “sentimental” was the best single term to use (100). This perception pervaded internationally, with early depictions of Irish-Americans in US cinema centring on varieties of negative excess, such as lawlessness, drunkenness and violence (Rains). Against this prevailing image of negative excess, the intellectuals and artists associated with what became known as the Celtic Revival began a conscious effort to “rebrand” Ireland from the nineteenth century onwards, reversing the negatives of the colonial project and celebrating Irish tradition, language and culture (Fanning).At first, only distinctly Irish sports associated with the amateur Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) were co-opted in this very particular nation-building project. Since then, however, sport more generally has acted as a site for the negotiation of a variety of overlapping Irish identities. Cronin, for example, describes how the GAA successfully repackaged itself in the 1990s to reflect the confidence of Celtic Tiger Irishness while also remaining rooted in the counties and parishes across Ireland. Studies of Irish football and rugby have similarly examined how these sports have functioned as representatives of changed or evolving Irish identities (Arrowsmith; Free). And yet, throughout Ireland’s changing economic fortunes – from boom to bust, to the gradual renewal of late – a touristic image of Irishness has remained hegemonic in the global imagination. In popular culture, and especially American popular culture, Ireland is often depicted as a kind of pre-industrial theme park – a place where the effects of modernity are felt less, or are erased altogether (Negra). The Irish are known for their charm and sociability; in Clancy’s words, they are seen internationally as “simple, clever and friendly folk” (98). We can identify a number of representational tropes within this dominant image, but two in particular are apposite here: ‘smallness’ and ‘happy-go-luckiness’.Sporting NewsBefore we consider Euro 2016, it is worth briefly considering how the news industry approaches such events. “News”, Dahlgren reminds us, is not so much “information” as it is a specific kind of cultural discourse. News, in other words, is a particular kind of discursive composition that constructs and narrates stories in particular ways. Approaching sports coverage from this vantage point, Poulton and Roderick (xviii) suggest that “sport offers everything a good story should have: heroes and villains, triumph and disaster, achievement and despair, tension and drama.” Similarly, Jason Tuck observes that the media have long had a tendency to employ the “vocabulary of war” to “hype up sporting events,” a discursive tactic which, he argues, links “the two areas of life where the nation is a primary signifier” (190-191).In short, sport is abundant in news values, and media professionals strive to produce coverage that is attractive, interesting and exciting for audiences. Stead (340) suggests that there are three key characteristics governing the production of “media sports packages”: spectacularisation, dramatisation, and personalisation. These production characteristics ensure that sports coverage is exciting and interesting for viewers, but that it also in some respects conforms to their expectations. “This ‘emergent’ quality of sport in the media helps meet the perpetual audience need for something new and different alongside what is familiar and known” (Rowe 32). The disproportionate attention to Irish fans at Euro 2016 was perhaps new, but the overall depiction of the Irish was rather old, I would argue. The news discourse surrounding Euro 2016 worked to suggest, in the Irish case at least, that the nation was embodied not only in its on-field athletic representatives but more so, perhaps, in its travelling fans.Euro 2016In June 2016 the Euros kicked off in France, with the home team beating Romania 2-1. Despite widespread fears of potential terrorist attacks and disruption, the event passed successfully, with Portugal eventually lifting the Henri Delaunay Trophy. As the competition progressed, the behaviour of Irish fans quickly became a central news story, fuelled in large part by smart phone footage uploaded to the internet by Irish fans themselves. Amongst the many videos uploaded to the internet, several became the focus of news reports, especially those in which the goodwill and childlike playfulness of the Irish were on show. In one such video, Irish fans are seen singing lullabies to a baby on a Bordeaux train. In another video, Irish fans appear to help a French couple change a flat tire. In yet another video, Irish fans sing cheerfully as they clean up beer cans and bottles. (It is noteworthy that as of July 2017, some of these videos have been viewed several million times.)News providers quickly turned their attention to Irish fans, sometimes using these to draw stark contrasts with the behaviour of other fans, notably English and Russian fans. Buzzfeed, followed by ESPN, followed by Sky News, Le Monde, Fox News, the Washington Post and numerous other providers celebrated the exploits of Irish fans, with some such as Sky News and Aljazeera going so far as to produce video montages of the most “memorable moments” involving “the boys in green.” In an article titled ‘Irish fans win admirers at Euro 2016,’ Fox News reported that “social media is full of examples of Irish kindness” and that “that Irish wit has been a fixture at the tournament.” Aljazeera’s AJ+ news channel produced a video montage titled ‘Are Irish fans the champions of Euro 2016?’ which included spliced footage from some of the aforementioned videos. The Daily Mirror (UK edition) praised their “fun loving approach to watching football.” Similarly, a headline for NPR declared, “And as if they could not be adorable enough, in a quiet moment, Irish fans sang on a French train to help lull a baby to sleep.” It is important to note that viewer comments under many of these articles and videos were also generally effusive in their praise. For example, under the video ‘Irish Fans help French couple change flat tire,’ one viewer (Amsterdam 410) commented, ‘Irish people nicest people in world by far. they always happy just amazing people.’ Another (Juan Ardilla) commented, ‘Irish fans restored my faith in humanity.’As the final stages of the tournament approached, the Mayor of Paris announced that she was awarding the Medal of the City of Paris to Irish fans for their sporting goodwill. Back home in Ireland, the behaviour of Irish fans in France was also celebrated, with President Michael D. Higgins commenting that “Ireland could not wish for better ambassadors abroad.” In all of this news coverage, the humble kindness, helpfulness and friendliness of the Irish are depicted as native qualities and crystallise as a kind of ideal national character. Though laudatory, the tropes of smallness and happy-go-luckiness are again evident here, as is the recurrent depiction of Irishness as an ‘innocent identity’ (Negra). The “boys” in green are spirited in a non-threatening way, as children generally are. Notably, Stephan Reich, journalist with German sports magazine 11Freunde wrote: “the qualification of the Irish is a godsend. The Boys in Green can celebrate like no other nation, always peaceful, always sympathetic and emphatic, with an infectious, childlike joy.” Irishness as Antidote? The centrality of the Irish fan footage in the international news coverage of Euro 2016 is significant, I suggest, but interpreting its meaning is not a simple or straightforward task. Fans (like everyone) make choices about how to present themselves, and these choices are partly conscious and partly unconscious, partly spontaneous and partly conditioned. Pope (2008), for example, draws on Emile Durkheim to explain the behaviour of sports fans sociologically. “Sporting events,” Pope tells us, “exemplify the conditions of religious ritual: high rates of group interaction, focus on sacred symbols, and collective ritual behaviour symbolising group membership and strengthening shared beliefs, values, aspirations and emotions” (Pope 85). Pope reminds us, in other words, that what fans do and say, and wear and sing – in short, how they perform – is partly spontaneous and situated, and partly governed by a long-established fandom pedagogy that implies familiarity with a whole range of international football fan styles and embodied performances (Rowe). To this, we must add that fans of a national sports team generally uphold shared understandings of what constitutes desirable and appropriate patriotic behaviour. Finally, in the case reported here, we must also consider that the behaviour of Irish fans was also partly shaped by their awareness of participating in the developing media sport spectacle and, indeed, of their own position as ‘suppliers’ of news content. In effect, Irish fans at Euro 2016 occupied an interesting hybrid position between passive consumption and active production – ‘produser’ fans, as it were.On one hand, therefore, we can consider fan footage as evidence of spontaneous displays of affective unity, captured by fellow participants. The realism or ‘authenticity’ of these supposedly natural and unscripted performances is conveyed by the grainy images, and amateur, shaky camerawork, which ironically work to create an impression of unmediated reality (see Goldman and Papson). On the other hand, Mike Cronin considers them contrived, staged, and knowingly performative, and suggestive of “hyper-aware” Irish fans playing up to the camera.However, regardless of how we might explain or interpret these fan performances, it is the fact that they play a role in making Irishness public that most interests me here. For my purposes, the most important consideration is how the patriotic performances of Irish fans both fed and harmonized with the developing news coverage; the resulting depiction of the Irish was partly an outcome of journalistic conventions and partly a consequence of the self-essentialising performances of Irish fans. In a sense, these fan-centred videos were ready-made or ‘packaged’ for an international news audience: they are short, dramatic and entertaining, and their ideological content is in keeping with established tropes about Irishness. As a consequence, the media-sport discourse surrounding Euro 2016 – itself a mixture of international news values and home-grown essentialism – valorised a largely touristic understanding of Irishness, albeit one that many Irish people wilfully celebrate.Why such a construction of Irishness is internationally appealing is unclear, but it is certainly not new. John Fanning (26) cites a number of writers in highlighting that Ireland has long nurtured a romantic self-image that presents the country as a kind of balm for the complexities of the modern world. For example, he cites New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who observed in 2001 that “people all over the world are looking to Ireland for its reservoir of spirituality hoping to siphon off what they can feed to their souls which have become hungry for something other than consumption and computers.” Similarly, Diane Negra writes that “virtually every form of popular culture has in one way or another, presented Irishness as a moral antidote to contemporary ills ranging from globalisation to post-modern alienation, from crises over the meaning and practice of family values to environmental destruction” (3). Earlier, I described the Arnoldian image of the Irish as a race governed by ‘negative excess’. Arguably, in a time of profound ideological division and resurgent cultural nationalism – a time of polarisation and populism, of Trumpism and Euroscepticism – this ‘excess’ has once again been positively recoded, and now it is the ‘sentimental excess’ of the Irish that is imagined as a salve for the cultural schisms of our time.ConclusionMuch has been made of new media powers to contest official discourses. Sports fans, too, are now considered much less ‘controllable’ on account of their ability to disrupt official messages online (as well as offline). The case of Irish fans at Euro 2016, however, offers a reminder that we must avoid routine assumptions that the “uses” made of “new” and “old” media are necessarily divergent (Rowe, Ruddock and Hutchins). My interest here was less in what any single news item or fan-produced video tells us, but rather in the aggregate construction of Irishness that emerges in the media-sport discourse surrounding this event. Relatedly, in writing about the London Olympics, Wardle observed that most of what appeared on social media concerning the Games did not depart significantly from the celebratory tone of mainstream news media organisations. “In fact the absence of any story that threatened the hegemonic vision of the Games as nation-builder, shows that while social media provided an additional and new form of newsgathering, it had to fit within the traditional news structures, routines and agenda” (Wardle 12).Obviously, it is important to acknowledge the contestability of all media texts, including the news items and fan footage mentioned here, and to recognise that such texts are open to multiple interpretations based on diverse reading positions. And yet, here I have suggested that there is something of a ‘preferred’ reading in the depiction of Irish fans at Euro 2016. The news coverage, and the footage on which it draws, are important because of what they collectively suggest about Irish national identity: here we witness a shift from identity performance to identity writ large, and one means of analysing their international (and intertextual significance), I have suggested, is to view them through the prism of established tropes about Irishness.Travelling sports fans – for better or worse – are ‘carriers’ of places and cultures, and they remind us that “there is also a cultural economy of sport, where information, images, ideas and rhetorics are exchanged, where symbolic value is added, where metaphorical (and sometimes literal, in the case of publicly listed sports clubs) stocks rise and fall” (Rowe 24). There is no question, to borrow Rowe’s term, that Ireland’s ‘stocks’ rose considerably on account of Euro 2016. In news terms, Irish fans provided entertainment value; they were the ‘human interest’ story of the tournament; they were the ‘feel-good’ factor of the event – and importantly, they were the suppliers of much of this content (albeit unofficially). Ultimately, I suggest that we think of the overall depiction of the Irish at Euro 2016 as a co-construction of international news media practices and the self-presentational practices of Irish fans themselves. The result was not simply a depiction of idealised fandom, but more importantly, an idealisation of a people and a place, in which the plucky little people on tour became the global standard bearers of Irish identity.ReferencesArnold, Mathew. Celtic Literature. 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