Editorial - Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies - An issue dealing specifically with our Celtic Identity; and Music beyond the Ballad

Abstract

This issue, one somewhat delayed, is, by its contents and thought, a living proof of the increasing dynamic of the discipline of folklore - and of the greater understanding of all folkloric matters, in this country, even as it is also a defiance of the now so fashionable MOOCS (multiple online on line courses, and their bland and yet often sweeping conclusions) as exist on this same field. And it indicates also the need for the general reader to realize, and to reflect deeply, on the mass of significant, but abrasive and temperamentally destructive issues that come under this rubric, and that are filling to overflow our once more traditional daily lives. Accordingly, we have taken the perhaps quaint step of indexing our journal's pages into the divisions of Names (personal and place), and then of Subjects / Themes as they are to be found in the articles in this issue. In a very real sense, too, we have made the decision to expand, even more assertively, the area of our field, it now to consider general and proximate fields of study, as highly significant areas for our research, analysis, and scholarly reporting and interpreting. Thus we have continued with our very natural existing interest in Indonesia and so in its religious / mental climate, and the forms of extremism that have so tragically occurred.