I agree with you about paltry. I figured it was better to send examples to give you a rough idea of the level that the book had, rather than saying 'it's got some bits'.
I'd go for getting it from a library rather than buying it, if that's possible. It's a pretty generic encyclopedia, but with a few 'odd' entries (modern urban legends) as well as the usual Greco-Roman/Viking ones.
The Maori book looks to me to be likely to have rather more of the sort of thing you're after.
Maori / Polynesian entities of similar types to unicorns and boggarts that I can think of off-hand are: * tuna (pronounced 'toona', not 'tyoona' (means eels) -- generally human-intelligent and often marrying women) (Maori and other Polynesian) * taniwha (Maori only -- although other Polynesian cultures seem to use sharks for similar stories) * the Patu Paiarehe (red-haired fairies from the Urewera area).
Named or unique entities: * the woman in the moon (Rona) * the bird woman from 'Hatupatu and the Bird Woman'
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Date: 24 Feb 2011 01:57 am (UTC)I'd go for getting it from a library rather than buying it, if that's possible. It's a pretty generic encyclopedia, but with a few 'odd' entries (modern urban legends) as well as the usual Greco-Roman/Viking ones.
The Maori book looks to me to be likely to have rather more of the sort of thing you're after.
Maori / Polynesian entities of similar types to unicorns and boggarts that I can think of off-hand are:
* tuna (pronounced 'toona', not 'tyoona' (means eels) -- generally human-intelligent and often marrying women) (Maori and other Polynesian)
* taniwha (Maori only -- although other Polynesian cultures seem to use sharks for similar stories)
* the Patu Paiarehe (red-haired fairies from the Urewera area).
Named or unique entities:
* the woman in the moon (Rona)
* the bird woman from 'Hatupatu and the Bird Woman'