Blaise Castle House Folk Museum, Henbury, BristolAuthor(s): J. W. LillicoSource: Folklore, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Dec., 1949), pp. 400-401Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256971 .

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NOTES

BLAISE CASTLE HOUSE FOLK MUSEUM, HENBURY, BRISTOL

THE Blaise Castle House Folk Museum, a branch of the City Museum, Bristol, was opened by the Earl Stanhope, K.G. on 6th May, 1949. This dignified, late Georgian house, standing in over 4oo acres of beautifully wooded grounds, was purchased by the Bristol Corporation in 1926. In 1947 the suggestion that a portion of the house should be used as a Folk Museum was approved by the City Council. It is proposed ultimately to develop parts of the estate as a Folk Park on the lines of the Scandi- navian prototypes.

The Museum, which is situated at Henbury, four miles north-west-of Bristol, is designed to give a picture of English life of former days and contains collections ranging in date from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.

In the entrance hall are two old bow-fronted shop windows. One contains examples of seventeenth and eighteenth century pewter; the other ladies' dress accessories of the nineteenth century which include lace scarves, parasols, fans, purses, and beadwork trinkets. A section of an old farmhouse kitchen occupies the back portion of the hall and here can be seen in their appropriate setting the old cooking utensils of the past-the basket spit turned by a wooden dog wheel, the salamander or browning iron, the wrought-iron chimney crane from which the pot hangers are hung, the bronze skillet, copper ale muller and other old friends which have long since vanished from the hearth.

On the first floor are several rooms of varying size in which the different aspects of the life of the people, domestic, social and cultural, corporate and economic, are illustrated.

Laundry, lighting and cooking appliances, tableware and dairying utensils show the types of objects which were once a familiar part of household life.

Dolls, musical instruments, games and pastimes, snuff and tobacco and personal objects such as spectacles, watches and wig curlers are displayed in the adjoining room.

Corporate life is illustrated by weights and measures, constables' truncheons, fire-insurance marks, boundary-beating staves, and the brass club pole heads used in various Somerset villages.

In view of the importance of agriculture in the West Country, one room has been devoted to displaying the old types of agricultural imple- ments once in common usage. A hand seed drill, hay collector, man-trap, chaff cutter, barley hummelers, mangel crusher, ox hames and ox yoke, dibblers, sickles, hay forks, flails, sheep bells and shepherds' crooks are

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Notes 401

among the various objects displayed. A fine collection of horse brasses and veterinary appliances is also exhibited.

Crafts and Industries occupy two rooms and among those exhibited are pin-making machines, ship carving tools, a hand-weaving carpet loom, clay pipe moulds, clog making tools, a glover's donkey and a straw-plait mill. Home crafts are illustrated by patchwork quilts, examples of lace and embroidery, samplers, wool winders, tatting and other types of needlework.

The comprehensive collection of coopering tools is displayed in a separate room which is set out as a cooper's shop in which a lay figure is seen dressing a stave surrounded by the traditional equipment of his craft.

J. W. LILLICO

THE new Jewish settlement in Palestine is distinguished by a febrile activity in almost every conceivable intellectual field; and folklore is not overlooked. In addition to the Palestine Institute of Folklore and Anthropology, which was briefly mentioned in the press in a recent article, " Folklore of the Ghetto ", there is also a less ambitious organisa- tion, " The Hebrew Folklore Society ", organised in Tel Aviv in 1942, which has sent us its publications-all in Hebrew, unlike those of the other body, which published at least synopses in English. The Society produces a quarterly journal, Yeda Am (" Knowledge of the People "), the title of which indicates its scope : it deals not so much with folklore as with Jewish folklore, or rather Jewish folk-ways (especially religious). This work is of great importance at the present time, for two reasons. The horrible devastation in Nazi Europe between 1939 and 1945 virtually exterminated many ancient Jewish centres, and greatly weakened those which have survived: hence their folk-ways must be put on record now if at all. On the other hand, the " gathering of the exiles " from all quarters of the world in the new state of Israel permits a great deal of work to be done there in this direction among the various elements which make up the new settlement, before their traditions become merged in the new synthesis. The Society has also published a brochure on Haman-Smiting (rather, Haman-Hammering) in the Diaspora and other popular usages associated with the feast of Purim : a most interest- ing subject, with obvious bearing upon the central theme of the Golden Bow. CECIL ROTH

EXHIBITION OF THE FOLK-ART OF POLAND October II-November 5, 1949

IN every Polish village it was customary for a row of sacred pictures to be hung high on the wall in nearly every house, forming a sort of frieze. These were either copies of famous pictures at various places of pil- grimage or pictures of saints, and were bought either at the places of pilgrimage or from travelling picture dealers. The paintings here

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