Slight change of modus operandi - instead of retiring to the stacks to catalogue in the post-lunch sopor of the early afternoon, I am buzzing over in the post-elevenses rush of caffeine and glucose!
Today's subject: four volumes (in five parts) of proverbs, folklore and superstitions collected by Vincent Stuckey Lean and published posthumously in 1902-4. Now, Mr Lean seems to have been A Good Thing, especially from a librarian's point of view, as he left a bequest of £50,000 to build a new public library for Bristol. However, as a folklorist he doesn't seem to have made his mark: he doesn't appear in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, nor does he have his own Wikipedia entry - possibly because his method of compilation seems to have been to sit in the British Museum reading through everything from Chaucer onwards, rather than working 'in the field'. He therefore proffers such gems as the following, under 'Oxford' in his section on 'Local Proverbs': 'They hold scholars to be as it were Bl' Oxford men - unnecessary guts that study only to grow hungry', from Thomas May's The life of a satyrical puppy, called Nim, who worrieth all those satyrists he knowes, and barkes at the rest, published in 1657 (it being a joke at the time to refer to Oxford as Blocksford, as in blockhead).
And now, as lunchtime approaches, I too grow hungry - and I've spent so long trying to find out about Mr Lean that I don't have time to catalogue the books!
