Editorial - Australian Folklore: A Yearly Journal of Folklore Studies - An Issue Reflecting on Notions of Defiance, the Tragedy of Wars of Retaliation, and on the Role of our Celtic Heritage

It is now inevitable that most journals in the field of folklore should refer to the ever changing nature of their discipline in recent years, this almost inevitable since the world's smaller countries' populations are scarcely able to remain history - remembering and regional, or cohesive and firm in their culture; nor are they found to be clear in their conceptions of their own inherited identity, or of the issues that are truly central to the thoughts and anxieties of their current society and so much more mixed peoples /races. Interestingly, too, so many hitherto quietly distinct regions are now become both seemingly new and even permanent locations and places of refuge for very different ethnicities and cultures, and this to an extent not encountered earlier. Further, so many of 'our people' have travelled remarkably far - whether for education, for pleasure, or from the need to escape intolerable stresses and oppression. Accordingly, it is very much the case that that this journal is now offered for due consideration very many research papers that cover issues and themes that may well be regarded as, variously, proximate to our 'Australian' title /focus and location in the world. However, they often seem helpfully informative in their content for those concerned with the mores and lore to be encountered ever more frequently in 'Australia'.