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This, the thirtieth issue of the annual and now both national and internationally reaching and respected publication, 'Australian Folklore', is one that marks a pleasing and most significant milestone in the recording and analysing of the customs, beliefs, and the various records of the habits and general and more particular mores of the Australian people and of the whole general society of this continent, without, however, treating of the more intimate culture of the Indigenous people. It is also a journal that has always taken due notice of the outside world folklore that interests Australians, much as has been the case with the open files of the British and folklore mothering major early journal, 'Folklore', one which allows itself a sweeping view of interesting research and significant recording, particularly across the English-speaking countries. Pleasingly, too, the Northern European e-folklore has more than one Australian scholar in its more regularly appearing authors. And in a not dissimilar fashion, a quite small and somewhat tentative twice a year - and more popular rather than strongly academic journal - and one cautiously issued through the more out of the way Curtin University in the west of the Australian Continent - has become one that is of some bulk in its size, drawn on - and published - both specific and more comparative and both interesting and variously relevant studies from a number of scholars from right across the globe, as well as maintaining most cordial academic and scholarly relations with such bodies as 1) the Modern Language Association in New York, 2) the Modern Humanities Research Association as based in Cambridge, England, 3) the Folk Life Society - it focused on the British Isles, and various matters as from Central Western Europe, and related journals in our field as based in Japan, France, and 4) the Estonian one, e-folklore. And now, in its thirtieth issue, it is concerned to cover many aspects of the customary, the more scholarly, or the more popular - or variously media-recognized - practices and beliefs of the diverse populace that are to be found across the Australian continent. |
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