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The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the Devil in Estonian Folk Religion. By Ulo Valk. Folklore Fellows Communications, vol. 127, no. 276. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2001. 217 pp. Price unspecified (pbk). ISSN 0014-5815. ISBN 951-41-0885-X
Professor Valk has examined some seventeen hundred texts of local legends and memorates from Estonian folklore archives, to analyse the motifs they contain relating to the visual appearance of the Devil. Many of these are familiar throughout Europe and are duly listed in the Stith-Thompson index (Devil as black man, as seductive woman, as horned monster, as black dog, and so on), but naturally they are far more vivid and impressive when embedded in a narrative context, as they are here. Other motifs and tale types are rare in Western Europe, so it is intriguing to discover how popular they are in Estonia. Take the story of the boy who played at hanging himself, relying on his friends to cut him down at the...