Book List

For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.

- Geoffrey Chaucer The Parlement of Foules.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.

- H. D. Thoreau Walden (1854).

I believe all the following works are truly ða ðe niedbeðearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne.

 Background Reading.

• Stephen Wilson The Magical Universe Everyday ritual and magic in Pre-Modern Europe Hambledon and Lodon, London 2000.
•  Nikolai Tolstoy The Quest for Merlin  Hamish Hamilton Ltd., London, 1985.
• J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (1954 - 1955) and The Hobbit (1937).  Mark Tolkien's brooking of Old English runes in The Hobbit.  For the links to the old lore see T. A. Shippey's The Road to Middle-Earth (1983).
•  C. S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia (1950 - 1956).  A friend of Tolkien's.  These books are so much more than they seem, and so much more than even Michael Ward hath guessed.
  “No school ever had a better Matron, more skilled and comforting to boys in sickness, or more cheery  . . She was floundering in the mazes of Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism; the whole Anglo-American Occultist tradition . . I had never heard of such things before; never, except in a nightmare or a fairy tale, conceived of spirits other than God and men. I had loved to read of strange sights and other worlds and unknown modes of being, but never with the slightest belief. But now, for the first time, there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms unchartered by my very simple theology. And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since -- the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have will know what I mean....”—Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), lf. 59.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 “The third glimpse [of Joy] came through poetry   . . I idly turned the pages of the book and found the unrhymed translation of Tegner’s Drapa and read, ‘I heard a voice that cried, Balder the beautiful is dead, is dead.’ . . I knew nothing about Balder, but instantly I was uplifted . . I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described.”—Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), lf. 17.               
  "I first heard a record of the [Wagner's] Ride of the Valkyries.... To a boy already crazed with 'the Northernness'... the Ride came like a thunderbolt.... it was ... a new kind of pleasure, if indeed 'pleasure' is the right word...." [lf. 75]
  
  "We are taught in the Prayer Book to 'give thanks to God for His great glory.'... I came far nearer to feeling this about the Norse gods whom I disbelieved in than I had ever done about the true God while I believed. ...." [lf. 77]                                                                                                                                             
•  John Masefield The Box of Delights (1935).  In this we meet Herne the Hunter.
•  Rudyard Kipling 'Puck of Pook's Hill' (1906). In this we meet, besides Puck, Wayland.  Tree Song borrowed by witches' Book of Shadows.
• 'Robin Hood and His Merrie Men' (1976) outlaid by Purnell. 
• Works of William Shakespeare, but for folklore and the old belief the best plays are: A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Macbeth.
• Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene.
• Sir Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur'. 
• "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
• The works of Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Auchinleck handwrit see the so-called "Short English Metrical Chronicle" on Hengest mistakenly thought of as a king of the Britons!
• Kyng Alexander  Laud handwrit
• Child Horn
• Havelock
• Sir Guy of Warwick 
• William Morris' 'A Tale of the House of the Wolfings ...' and 'The Roots of the Mountains...' (1889).
•  Charles Kingsley 'Hereward the Wake: last of the English' (1866). 
• John Lesslie Hall's 'Old English Idyls' (1899).  Stave-rhyme leeth in new English about deeds from the early days of the English in Britain.
•  Laȝamon Leouenaðes sone's ‘Hystoria Brutonum’.  Stave-rhyme leeth dating to time of Kings Richard I,  John or Henry III, and the last known outing for many old words like scop.  If you can get over the oddness of a book about the Welsh being set out as fit fare for the English, watch out for: his asides (line 3548 Seoððen comen Normans; mid heore nið-craften.); his wordcraft; and, what he writeth about gods and elves (which draweth more upon his own Englishness than upon the French work he is mostly awending).
•  
• The ancient, honorable, famous, and delighfull historie of Huon of Bourdeaux, one of the peeres of Fraunce, and Duke of Guyenne Enterlaced with the loue of many ladies, as also the fortunes and aduentures of knights errant, their amorous seruants. London : Printed by Thomas Purfoot, and are to be sould by Edward White, at his shop at the little north dore of Poules at the signe of the Gunne, 1601.
  
  
  

Speech-lore.

•   Henry Sweet's 'The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon'. 
•  Jan de Vries Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1977)

English Wyrdwriters.

• Bede's De Temporum Ratione and his Historia Ecclesiastica
• The Old English awending of Paulus Orosius' Historia Adversum Paganos.
• The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle".  
• Robert of Glochester's 'Historia rythmis Anglicanis'. 
•  Sir Frank Stenton Anglo-Saxon England.

English and "Old Saxon" Folklore and Belief.

• Sheena McGrath The Sun Goddess Myth, Legend and History Blandford, London 1997
• Brian Branston 'The Lost Gods of England' (1957).  The "alpha" book.
•  Christian Blinkenberg The Thunder Weapon in Religion and Folklore (1911) Cambridge University Press.  If you don't read any other book in your life, read this!
•  Janet and Colin Bord's 'Secret Country' (1978) and 'Earth Rites' (1983).
• J. Simpson and S. Roud  A Dictionary of English Folklore, The Oxford University Press 2000.  Can be noteful at times.
•  Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain Oxford University Press 1996 and his  The Rise and Fall of Merry England Oxford University Press 1994. These have to be read, but they are overly uptight about not going beyond the bookings and draughts he doth set forth as soothing therein.  As he hath nothing further back than about 1400, he rather seemeth to believe that there was nothing beforehand and that the Maypole and such like are all late outgrowths of the new belief!  Furthermore, that there is no good inting to ween that such things have come down from the old belief.  Although he nameth and brooketh the work, he doth not seem to have read what John Mirk writeth about Candlemas in his Festial.
• Brand's popular antiquities of Great Britain. A Dictionary. In two deals. outlaying by W. Carew Hazlitt 1905 London, Reeves and Turner 
•  John Brand Observations on popular antiquities, chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies and superstitions : Arranged and rev., with additions, in 3 deals outlayed by Sir Henry Ellis London : F.C. and J. Rivington [etc.] 1813
•  Fairy tales, legends and romances illustrating Shakespeare and other early English writers, to which are prefixed two preliminary dissertations; 1. On pigmies. 2. On fairies outlaying by W. Carew Hazlitt London, F. & W. Kerslake 1875
•  REV. T. F. THISELTON DYER Folk-Lore of Shakespeare
  London: Griffith & Farran  [1883] online evenlatching.
• Joseph Ritson Robin Hood A collection of all theAncient Poems, songs and ballads now extant, in two deals, t'other outlaying, William Pickering, London 1832 
•  John Aubrey's works.
• Richard Verstegan's 'A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities concerning the most noble and renowned English Nation' (1605). 
• Percy's 'Reliques...' (1765). 
• F. J. Child's 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads' (1882 to 1898). 
•  The English awending by J. S. Stallybrass of Jacob Grimm's 'Teutonic Mythology' (1882 to 1888). 
•  Benjamin Thorpe's 'Northern Mythology' (1851). 
• "Beowulf". 
• 'Wīdsīð' and 'Dēor' from The Exchester Book. 
• The Old English Rune Rhyme. 
• John M. Kemble On Anglo-Saxon Runes in Archaeologia  1840 edthrutched Anglo-saxon books Pinner, Middlesex 1991 as Anglo-Saxon Runes
•  John M. Kemble Solomon and Saturn
• Nine Worts Gealdor 
•  The draught called De Temporibus found in deal 3 of Oswald Cockayne's Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft (1866)
• Snorri Sturluson 'Edda'.  And Snorri’s Heimskringla (from incipit "Kringla heimsins,...") eða Sögur Noregs konunga.  
•  Of the Sögur I think Eyrbyggja saga among the Íslendingasögur, for what it doth say about the worship of þórr should be marked, and of the Fornaldarsögur the many tellings of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks for what it doth say about Freyur and Óðinnur Gautreks saga and Örvar-Odds saga for what they say about Óðinnur and þór .  Among the Riddarasögur the Trójumanna saga and Breta sögur will be found to have some slight worth for the odd evenings of Northern and Roman gods therein.
•  THE ENGLISH HUNDRED-NAMES BY
  Olof S. ANDERSON  LUND
  Printed by Hakan Ohlsson 1934
• Magister Adamus Bremensis                             Descriptio insularum aquilonis etched to his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum  for temple of gods at Old Uppsala
• The so-called "Poetic Edda". 
• Tacitus' 'Libellus de origine moribus et situ Germanorum' called “Germania”, 
•  Johannes Schefferus's Lapponia, Originally published in Frankfurt am Main in Latin in 1673, the work was translated within a decade of its initial printing into English (Oxford, 1674), German (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1675), French (Paris, 1678), and Dutch (Amsterdam, 1682). There were two English awendings however, both titled The History of Lapland. The first from 1674 is much the weaker, often missing things out. The t'other is by Olaf Rudbeck in 1704  from the Latin.  The best bits are gathered here.

• Walter Keating Kelly’s Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore (London : Chapman & Hall, 1863) 
•  August Brunk's 'Der wilde Jäger im Glauben des pommerschen Volkes' in the Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 1903 vol. xiii.
•  Kemp Malone  "An Anglo-Latin Version of the Hjadningavig". Speculum Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 35-44
  Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2850127

And for those seeking to know the underlying deep Wisdom to all things that the English themselves have minned less well.

Romans and Greeks.

• Boethius' 'Consolation of Philosophy'. King Alfred and Geoffrey Chaucer both had goes at awending this.  Alfred's awending misseth out some things however, but also etcheth odd bits of lore not found in Boethius's work.
• Theony Condos Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans: A Sourcebook Phanes Press Grand Rapids Michigan 1997 an awending of Eratosthenes' Katasterismoi, or an epitome thereof, and Hyginus' Astronomica. 
• Sallustius 'On the Gods and the World'.  Utter gold.  If you never read another book, read this.
• The Works of the Emperor Julian awent by W. C. Wright. 
• The Works of Plato and Proclus' writings thereon.  Thomas Taylor's awendings of these are not to be overlooked.
• Plotinus Enneads
• Homer's 'The Odyssey' and 'The Iliad'. Vergil's works and side writings by Servius.
• Plutarch's 'Moralia'. 
• The Homeric and Orphic hymns. 
• Martianus Capella's 'The marriage of Philology and Mercury', awent by William Harris Stahl and R. Johnson, with E. L. Burge, (1977). 
• Percival Vaughan Davies' awending of Macrobius' 'The Saturnalia' (1969).
• William Harris Stahl's awending of Macrobius' 'Commentary on the Dream of Scipio' (1966). 
•  A.B. Cook's 'Zeus. A Study In Ancient Religion' (1914-1925).
•  J. Rendel Harris' Boanerges (1913), 'The Cult of the Heavenly Twins' and 'The Dioscuri In The Christian Legends' (1923). 
•  J. C. Lawson Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion: a study in survivals (1910) Cambridge University Press.
• Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim Three Books of Occult Philosophy beingan English awending of 1651 of the earlier Latin outlaying. Herein is summed up all that the monkish bookmen of the day had gathered from the Arabs, the Jews and from the old Greek and Roman draughts.  The writer had the bookhoard of Trithemius to draw upon, and it overgoeth all that the Picatrix doth do, but in a far better way.  There is a good outlaying of the English awending of Nettesheim's work, albeit with updated spellings, by Donald Tyson for Llewellyn's Sourcebook Series, Llewellyn Books, St.Paul, Minnesota 2000.
•  J. E. Fontenrose  Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress (1981)
• Manilius' Astronomica

India.

• Alberuni's India awent by Dr. Edward C. Sachau (1910) outlaid by  Kegan, Paul Trench, Trübner and Co. Ltd., London. Online evenlatching.

• Arthur A. Macdonell Vedic Mythology (1897)

• The 'Rigveda' and 'Bhagavadgita'. 
• Vishnu Purana
•  Asko Parpola The Roots of Hinduism (2015)