American folklore and antiquarianism
Samuel Adams Drake
1833 – 1905
Samuel Adams Drake was a Boston-born historian and journalist who devoted much of his career to documenting New England's regional legends, haunted locales, and colonial superstitions. His A Book of New England Legends and Folk-Lore in Prose and Poetry (1884) remains a foundational text for American ghost-lore and regional supernatural tradition, preserving vanishing oral histories at a time when industrialisation was erasing the older layers of folk belief.
Archive Paths
Folk Magic
Folk magic texts and practical traditions covering charms, cures, household rites, prayers, talismans, and vernacular magical practice.
Comparative Religion
Comparative religion texts on ritual, myth, sacrifice, belief, ancient religion, and cross-cultural theories of sacred practice.
Comparative Mythology
Comparative mythology texts on gods, hero cycles, symbolic patterns, classical myth, Indo-European myth, and cross-cultural mythic structures.
Folklore Studies
Folklore studies texts on folk tales, fairy belief, superstition, regional customs, oral tradition, and the collection of vernacular belief.
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