One of my rule of thumb assessments of any reference book is to find a title so interesting that I delay the review because I keep reading and cross‐referring within it. This title scores very highly indeed in that scale, and I have had to discipline myself to pause and prepare this review, but with the alluring promise of even more detailed examination later.
Initially, I wondered at the term “companion” since this looks at first sight more like a dictionary, especially with its Oxford University Press provenance. There are thousands of entries covering all cultures and mythologies, as well as more general entries; all are arranged in a single alphabetical sequence, emphasising the appearance as if a dictionary. The notion of “companion” is, however, justified by the nature and often the length of the entries. These are not simply brief factual accounts or definitions, but are more discursive explanatory, comparative or analytical discussions, a feat managed even in the many briefer entries. A few are fairly long: naturally, those on broad topics such as Egyptian Mythology with some ten columns, but also for important topics, so that, for example, The Mabinogion has some nine columns.
How refreshing it is to have a single author of such a reference book, for that allows a consistency and a personal approach so often lacking, or diluted, in team efforts. David Leeming is an emeritus professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut: he has worked and published on world mythology for many years and this book is the culmination – or perhaps distillation – of that work. His entries are full of facts, of course: at least, facts as far as they exist. I was going to suggest that the entry on Druids gives them rather short shrift, but what we actually know about them and their practices (as opposed to the wilder and sillier modern suppositions) is very little, and that from largely hostile sources. But the entries go beyond description with informed comment or discussion, such as the comment on Robert Graves's The White Goddess: “… a controversial work, popular among *Wiccans and those who think of themselves as modern “Pagans”. He then proceeds in a couple of sentences to set the book in its scholarly context. By the way, the apparent cross‐reference to *Wiccans by the asterisk proves a false link (the only one I have so far come across).
The value of a single author is evident too in the truly comparative nature of the work. Coverage is absolutely international, but the cross‐references – both formal to other entries and within comparisons drawn across cultures within the texts of the entries – show the individual author's grasp of his entire material which, having been arbitrarily split by alphabetical arrangement, is brought back together where relevant in the texts. There really is a remarkable range and amount of content here: cultures from the South Seas to the Arctic and from prehistory to today. All are given excellent coverage both in range and depth. The introduction discusses the boundaries or relationships between myth, religion, fairy tale and folklore. Professor Leeming goes for inclusion rather artificial exclusion, which accounts for what is religion to one culture (including Christianity) being treated here as mythology for other contexts. As well as covering individual mythologies, there are numerous entries too for mythological themes (Woman as Source of Sorrow, Fairy Tale and Myth, Literary Analysis and Myth and New Mythology for examples) and for scholars (Northrop Frye, Robert Graves etc) in the field.
All is arranged alphabetically in a single sequence, and if the appearance of asterisks (indicating other entries for cross‐reference) throughout can become slightly irritating it does assist in making full use of the text, and I cannot suggest a better means of making these invaluable links. There is a very comprehensive 15‐page bibliography, and a small number of entries have a reference to works listed in this. But since the bibliography is largely to be used on its own, its entries might have been better grouped in at least major categories. Among the introductory material is a very useful Cultural Listings of Entries listing entry terms under a wide range of categories, for example at a random opening including Animistic Mythology, Arthurian Myths, Asian Mythology, Balinese Mythology and Buddhist Mythology.
The index is a largely missed opportunity: a number of names within entries are featured (for example, Tolkien is referred to twice in the work without having an entry of his own) a much larger number are not. This is a companion and not a dictionary, but the index, which repeats most if not all of the entry headings (themselves arranged alphabetically anyway in the main text) could usefully drop those and concentrate instead on the many names within texts which do not have entries themselves: Odin's horse Sleipnir does feature in entries, but without one of his own and with no index entry to find them; that is typical of many other names which don't necessarily warrant their own entries but could still usefully be sought by an index. The black and white illustrations are reasonably well reproduced, are relevant and are informatively captioned, so although not great in number they do add to the text. The same can be said of the eight‐page colour plates gathered in the centre of the volume.
The best reference books have often – even usually – been the result of individual effort, whether as here by a single author or whether by a very strong editorial hand on a team. This is by any standards a very good reference book: if its content has an intrinsic interest (which given the universality of myth it must have) that interest here has considerable value added by the interpretation, distillation, informed discussion and comparative scholarship across all the entries. This starts as with any reference book as a work to consult, but it immediately waylays the reader into following myriad paths into its rich content. It will serve any reference collection at almost any level, from the school to the university library and of course the wider public too.
