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- [00:01]
Kerry Holbrook
So good so good so good.
- [00:03]
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Kerry Holbrook
How did I not know Rack has Adidas?
- [00:16]
Owen Davies
There's always something new.
- [00:17]
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- [00:58]
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- [01:27]
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- [02:03]
Matt Elton
Today 31st December marks the end of the year for much of the world, a time of merriment, retrospection and looking to the future. It's also one of many days bound up in its own set of folklore and traditions, which vary significantly even around the uk. In today's episode of the History Extra podcast, I'm joined by Kerry Holbrook and Owen Davies, co authors of a new book on British folklore, to explore some of the nation's folkloric traditions and why we should consider ghost stories just as much a part of those traditions as goblins and Guy Fawkes. I kicked off by asking the two authors to introduce themselves.
- [02:38]
Kerry Holbrook
I'm Dr. Kerry Holbrook and I am senior Lecturer in Folklore and History at the University of Hertfordshire and programme lead for the MA Folklore Studies.
- [02:47]
Owen Davies
And I'm Owen Davies, I'm professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire and with co founded the MA and Folklore Studies with Kerry.
- [02:55]
Matt Elton
Thank you so much both for being with us today. We are obviously talking in an episode on New Year's Eve on 31 December, which in itself is an interesting moment to be thinking about folklore and thinking about some of the currents of this subject. Are there any aspects of this particular folkloric day in the calendar that you think help illustrate the wider themes we're going to be talking about?
- [03:15]
Kerry Holbrook
Yeah, I mean, so there are so many different customs that happen for New Year's Eve, and I guess the interesting thing is that they're different regionally, so different regions across Britain have their own customs or the same custom has really interesting regional variations and these customs have changed over time. So you're seeing that journey. One of my favorite New Year's Eve customs for kind of thinking about is first footing. So the idea that the first person through the door after midnight will bring either good luck or bad luck, depending on who it is and also depending on what gifts they're bringing. Different regions had their different ideas of who is the ideal person through that door after midnight, depending on hair colour. So some areas would say, you know, you definitely want someone with dark hair. Other places have said it doesn't really matter as long as they're not ginger. A couple of places do say fair, but, yeah, dark hair seems to be the general preference. And you definitely want a male, you don't want a female to be the first one through the door. So there are some really interesting examples of people kind of manufacturing the ideal first footing. So as a woman, maybe not making sure they're not the first person through the door. But actually, I think there was one example of somebody paying their taxi driver to step through the front door so that at least. At least it'd be a man. And, you know, ideally bringing a lump of coal with them, symbolizing the prosperity of the year ahead. Obviously it changes now. People tend to do it much more informally, whether it's just a case of getting a member of the family to step out and then step back in again. And very few of us have coal fires. So that idea of bringing coal in or placing something in the fireplace when you've just got kind of an electric fire or just a radiator in your apartment, but still people are finding ways to adapt, whether they're just Bringing kind of a fake lump of coal. But, yeah, that's a really interesting example of both regional differences and also of changes over time.
- [05:14]
Owen Davies
And we know people took it seriously because we actually have court cases where, you know, someone drunk turns up at midnight on your doorstep and it's the wrong sort of person, you know. You know, fights and anger can ensue. So we do know it was taken seriously because of that.
- [05:28]
Matt Elton
This is a great example, I think, of the ways in which these are really central to culture in Britain, but also in the ways in which they've shifted and mutated across time. I wanted to explore some of those themes in more depth as we go. To start us off, though, if we're just considering the word folklore itself, when does that date to and does it replace any similar or different ideas in people's imagination?
- [05:53]
Owen Davies
It was coined in 1848 by a guy called Toms. He was writing under the pseudonym of Ambrose Merton, and he was a librarian, but passionate about collecting what were then called popular antiquities or vulgar antiquities. So he says we should be treating these customs and beliefs with a degree of respect. We should be interested. We should be collecting them. And actually, we need a new term rather than. Which is kind of derogatory, you know, vulgar, calling it the common people vulgar. So he coins this term folklore and gives us sort of broad definitions of all the things it is and customs and beliefs and traditions and all the way, you know, rhymes and jokes and all sorts, you know. And he puts out a call basically to say, hey, let's collect this. I mean, people have been collecting it for a century or more. We have some great collections going right back to the early 17th century. Even people saying, you know, this is what the Volga think. So, yeah, it's coined in 1848. And there are people, you know, right through until today who still have problems with the term, what it encapsulates. But it's stuck. It's stuck. And certainly in this country, there is no other term that really encapsulates everything that we think about when we think of folklore.
- [06:55]
Matt Elton
And what do we mean when we talk about folklore? How is it different, for instance, from a fairy tale or from a legend? Are there specific ways that we can define this as a set category of thing?
- [07:06]
Kerry Holbrook
Well, folklore incorporates fairy tale and legend. So kind of it's this umbrella term for. Should I use my pithy definition?
- [07:14]
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- [07:15]
Matt Elton
Ye.
- [07:15]
Kerry Holbrook
Okay, I'll get it. So, yeah, kind of how we define folklore in its kind of simplest sense is the customs we practice, the stories we tell and the beliefs that we hold. So so many things fall under the term folklore and there are a few things where it's a little bit hazy. So where does religion fall, for instance, some of the customs we practice as part of religion or some of the beliefs we hold? So, yeah, the line between them is quite vague and also changes over time and again, the stories we tell, whether those are legends, whether those are fairy tales or whether they are memories. So things that people have experienced that maybe fall under the umbrella of folklore if they say, had an encounter with the supernatural, for instance. So folklore is a huge, huge topic that covers so much, really, of our everyday lives.
- [08:04]
Matt Elton
And to expand on the idea of practice you mentioned there, one of the things we spoke about at the start of the conversation is the idea of there being a calendar to which you can p various folkloric traditions or rituals. But in the book you somewhat complicate this as being our way of understanding this. Can you talk us through a little bit about the extent to which we can regard this as something tied to a calendar or whether we need to move a bit away from that understanding?
- [08:30]
Owen Davies
I mean, there certainly is a calendar of customs and practice and performances. And folklorists, right from the beginning of the folklore movement in the, you know, from the days of Tom onwards, folklore have loved to sort of put them in a calendar so you can go through the year from whether you start in the 1st of January or you start at Easter or whatever, but then you go round and people like it because there are dozens and dozens of books out there on the shelves today, which are basically calendars of customs. The National Trust has just produced one. Again, people love them and so I like them as well. They're fun. But they do tend to merge distinct genres of influences that have led to this calendar. And so what we're trying to do in the book is actually, instead of going round the year, we basically try to categorize what are the different influences on that calendar, and hopefully that gives a better sense of how complex it is, actually. So obviously there's the Christian calendar, you know, kind of key points in many of these syllables are essentially the points of Jesus's life. That's what it is. It's a commemoration of Jesus life, of birth, inception, birth, suffering and death. And so that's why we have Easter and we have Whitsun, we have Christmas Day, et cetera. But that's only one part of it. That's only one part of it because we have a whole system from the medieval period on, of Market days and fairs, and they're sometimes on these key points or on saints days, you come to saints. Of course, we have the Reformation, but the saints days continue. But not all the saints are nowhere near to the degree of the saints festivals that we had in Catholic times in this country. So there's a classic shift and change, but also a continuity as well. And then markets and fairs also can be secular as well. So they can be on new days which then sort of institute maybe for decades or even centuries, when, for example, today your charter fair is when the fun fair comes to your provincial town. You know, that all has a history going back to the late medieval period. Obviously, they're not all continuous, so these things come and go over this time. We also have calendar events which are based around the monarchy, obviously Guy Fawkes, you know, classic one. We also used to have a Mar. Today, for a few decades that was instituted, but sort of died after about 50 years. We used to have sort of Waterloo Day and people would gather and celebrate on Waterloo, but again with the last of the veterans dying off that kind of died. And so we have these, you know, periodic ones as well. So it's a complex mix. And they're not all separated. And they all have a history that sometimes is very difficult to unpick as to why an event or custom is exactly on that or how it is expressed. Although there are key ones, you know, there are key ones like Christmas, etc. So, yeah, it's a really interesting reflection on cultural change and religious change and political change.
- [11:17]
Kerry Holbrook
And also the kind of the history of other cultures influences not just today, but historically. You think about the Christmas tree and how that came over with German immigrants. And you think about all the other events that mark our calendar today that, you know, Maybe weren't marked 100 years ago, even if they were being kind of privately celebrated. Things like Diwali, Lunar New Year. So, you know, households were celebrating them in Britain 100 years ago, but today they are big community events, citywide events that show kind of how much our kind of calendar customers are being influenced in such a wonderful way by lots and lots of different cultures and, you know, things like bonfire night and how that often also merges with Diwali in certain communities. And you just. Yeah, it's really nice to see. And also what I hope we kind of get across in the book is that none of these customs have stayed the same. There is no such thing as custom that is, you know, the pure original custom that just doesn't exist. And they've always. Yeah, they've always adapted, they've always merged with other things and drawn of other things. So, yeah, that's kind of one of the main messages we wanted to get across with the book.
- [12:30]
Matt Elton
So this wealth of practice and customs, which, from your description there, sounds like it's in continual flux and renewal, that might be quite at odds with perhaps one view of folklore in Britain, which is very much rooted in nostalgia and in the rural specifically. Can you trace for us where that image, where that perhaps fixed image came from and why it's been so. So influential?
- [12:54]
Owen Davies
Yeah, you say, and it's so ingrained today, even it all stems from one of the sort of founding, sort of theories of folklore studies, which was the idea of survivals. And this was a very dominant in anthropology as well. And this was the idea that, you know, there were stages of civilization and in the sort of traditions, customs and beliefs of what was usually described as the peasantry were these sort of fossils of essentially a pre Christian ancient time. And so folklorists are avidly going around the countryside of Europe looking for these, these fossils, these survivals. And they're looking for things like, well, that might, might be a pre Christian fire festival or might be a horse cult, might be solar worship. Those are kind of the three key things that they conceptualize pre Christian religion to be like in terms of practice. And so they're collecting, but underpinning it is then the fact that these are relics. They don't change, folklore doesn't change. And one of the, you know, one of the leading folklorists of the time named Gom, basically said, folklore does not change, it is an artifact. And this gets then brought into a sort of really problematic, sort of racist and racial colonial sort of context. Because obviously in the colonies they're looking at primitive, as they call them, peoples even you get a language of heathens and savages by early folklorists and they're saying, look, we find this in Indonesia, we find this in the Pacific island, or we find this in India, in some tribe in India. And look, we find the same thing in, you know, in rural Shropshire. They're all on the same continuum, this primitive state. By definition, if you subscribe to this idea of survivalism, it is rural because the folklorists go, well, this stuff disappears in towns and cities where people are knowing and they're more educated, they're more cynical, et cetera. And you're taking away from a kind of a rural context. So that was under me, not every folklore was like that. Some were saying hold on, hold on. Folklore is being created all the time. Let's not get hang up here on the idea that it's unchanging and, and fossils, but it is still a strong theme right through to today. The way in which folklore is represented, particularly British folklore, has to be said, American folklore studies is quite a different thing to British folklore in the way it's developed. So, yeah, we still have this idea that it's rural, as you say, and that feeds into nostalgic impulses, it feeds into aspects of nationalist or national identity about what represents England, what represents Wales, what presents Scotland. And so it's normally harking back to that, as you say, rural past. Whereas obviously what we argue in the book is that it's constantly changing, it's constantly new, there's constantly new influences.
- [15:28]
Matt Elton
In the first few minutes of this conversation, we talked about the ways in which there were various variations of New Year's traditions. Was there a point at which these local or regional traditions started to be built together to form a more national sense of folklore?
- [15:44]
Owen Davies
I mean, there's a specific history for the ways in which identity draws upon folklore in Wales, Scotland and England. You know, Wales and Scotland were forging their folkloric identity, so to speak, from the second half of the 18th century as a reaction to basically English domination and saying, hold on, who are we? After Culloden? The Scots are kind of going, well, certainly the middle class Scots are going, who are we? You know, we are a proud peoples. This is who we are, this is our culture. And the Welsh were going through something similar because obviously they were defending a, a language as well, which was under threat from English. Half of Wales was still speaking Welsh in the mid 19th century, but it was because to be locked. So they are drawing, but they pick on very specific things. And so obviously the Welsh kind of reconstructed Eistedt as a celebration of its traditions of poetry and balladry and bardry and druidry, of course. And the Scots don't have the language aspect, but they pick up on. They basically invent the Highland Games, but also tartan as well. Whereas the English as the dominant have only come to this sort of, I think what we call identity wobble or identity crisis in recent decades, frankly, with devolution. And so this is where we're at the moment with obviously with the whole debate around St. George's flag is what is English then what represents England? We can't put on a national dress. We don't have those identities that have been forged. St. George's flag does a lot of heavy lifting about how do we represent ourselves if you're English. So, yeah, so it is specific things. Calendar, customs don't really come into us. What we have is obviously then the national saints days. That's what becomes the kind of the key focus, particularly for diasporas who are going, we're English in America, we're English in Singapore, we're English, or we're Scottish in New Zealand. This is what we'll do on St. Andrew's Day or St. David's Day. And it's pretty basic stuff.
- [17:37]
Kerry Holbrook
But broadcasting was also a big force in establishing something as a national tradition. And even if, you know, as our book shows, different families, different groups are celebrating these events differently. They're all doing it with their own traditions, their own kind of family folklore. Kind of what you eat for your Christmas dinner varies across households. And yet television, film are telling us that there is the tradition that represents us. And, you know, had something interesting about Hogman A, didn't you?
- [18:10]
Owen Davies
Yeah. I mean, 1930s, even Scots were saying, well, actually, the BBC's kind of reinvigorated Hogmandy, you know, it kind of was dying on its feet. People weren't taking much interest in it. And then the BBC starts having Hogmandy broadcasts. And so you do get comments in the Scottish newspapers going, well, you know, we're not particularly happy with the way in which it was printed. But, yeah, hats off to the BBC. You know, Hogmandy's back on the agenda, you know, as a great Scottish institution. And then you get, you know, news items going, look, even the English now are in to Hogmany, you know, into this great Scottish festival. So, yeah, the BBC is in its regional units and its national units has played a significant role. Absolutely. In the ways in which we identify certain types of performance or certain days as important or not.
- [18:55]
Kerry Holbrook
And supermarkets.
- [18:56]
Owen Davies
Yes.
- [18:56]
Kerry Holbrook
I mean, if you think about it like my local supermarket in Manchester sells haggis in the run up to Burns Night. You know, that's how people. That's how people know that it's coming up to Burns Night because the supermarket starts to stock things. Same with Lunar New Year. You'll suddenly start to get those displays at the end of the aisle saying, you know, this is the day of lunar New Year. Buy the stuff and celebrate it. So, yeah, I think kind of broadcasting and supermarkets have underestimated role in how we view calendar customs today.
- [19:27]
Matt Elton
I love the idea that you can trace where we are in the folklore calendar by the special aisle of the supermarket. That's incredible.
- [19:33]
Kerry Holbrook
Yep.
- [19:34]
Matt Elton
One of the things your book does is it goes through a number of different themes or specific dimensions of this story, and I wanted to get into some of those, if we can. One of them that I'm particularly interested is the idea of folk medicine. Are there any recurring themes or, I suppose, preoccupations or cures that you think are particularly emblematic or telling about the wider story?
- [19:55]
Owen Davies
Yeah, folk medicine is really complex. When you look over it over 500 years, there are multiple influences, multiple. What used to be standard orthodox theories of medicine and the body, which still are incorporated in complex ways in folk medicine right into the 20th century and even today, in terms of the continuing vibrancy of folk medical practice, there are aspects of folk medicine which are no longer accepted or believed in. I think one of the most interesting, one of the most surprising ones for most people is the idea of the ingestion of animals, that animals grow inside you and that these. This causes various problems and gastric problems in particular. This was a very common and widespread belief right through until 1920s, 1930s, indeed, probably until the NHS actually, and multiple cases. So essentially what it is is that you have terrible internal problems and it could be cancers or it could be indigestion or, who knows, it could be a hernia or whatever, whatever they're suffering from. We're not in the business of trying to diagnose what it is they've got, but the point is they explain it by thinking, well, all these grumb, my stomach's grumbling and things. There must be something inside me. How did it get there and what is it? And it basically comes down to mostly newts and lizards and occasionally a snake. And the idea is that you might have eaten a bit of watercress in London and on it was probably some newt's eggs and the newt has grown inside your stomach and obviously it's sitting there and it's growing and it's basically taking all the nourishment from you and basically you're diminishing as it grows. And sometimes it's the idea that you fall asleep in a meadow or you drink water from a stream, and that's the way in which you kind of get tiny lizards getting into your tiny noose. This goes for animals as well. This is widespread idea amongst cattle that they can drink this stuff. So in one sense it's understandable you can't diagnose, even doctors couldn't diagnose what it was that you were suffering from at that time. And so, yeah, it kind of makes sense and we also have the idea of earwigs that if you have earweight, is because an earwig has got into your ear at night and it's. Or even multiple. There's a classic case from Wales in the 1830s where a woman supposedly had 25 earwigs extracted from her ear, you know, and she's suffering from terrible headaches. And one of the cures, and this was practiced was that particularly for snakes who were thought to be partial to milk, is you'd leave a bowl of milk next to your bed and hopefully during the night when your mouth is open, while it's snoring away, that it'll sneak alms. He wants a bit of that milk. And that is a cure. So it seems extraordinary to us, but actually, within context of time, you can understand it.
- [22:32]
Kerry Holbrook
A lot of ailments were also blamed, I don't know to what extent on witchcraft. Think about the 17th century, and if you had.
- [22:39]
Owen Davies
19Th century.
- [22:39]
Kerry Holbrook
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for centuries, if you had an ailment that couldn't be diagnosed, couldn't be cured with the usual remedies, then it was a case of witchcraft and bewitchment. And, you know, cunning folk, which Owen's written a lot about, had kind of various methods, you know, folk medical or magical medical methods for curing them. And these were understood in medical terms as magical. So one thing that we've looked at quite a lot is the witch bottle. And a lot of people think that these bottles that are kind of uncovered under people's hearthstones or under the threshold or kind of buried in a field somewhere were about protection. But actually, these witch bottles were about curing somebody who was believed to be under bewitchment. So, yeah, we've had a lot of fun digging into some of the witch bottles that are in museum collections across the country.
- [23:37]
Matt Elton
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- [24:52]
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- [25:57]
Matt Elton
Can we talk some more about the recurring figures of the witch and the magician in British folklore? Why do they recur and what is it about them that is so captivating, I suppose?
- [26:07]
Owen Davies
Well, I think that there are different types of witch figure, and that's one of the starting places. The people who are accused and prosecuted during the witch trial era, or were beaten up and scratched and ostracized up until the early 20th century in this country were basically called conflict witches. They were people who were in conflict within families or with neighbors usually. And the disputes can be very mundane. It's a bit like people who end up shooting their neighbor because of a high hedge today, or barbecue smoke. These sorts of annoyances are just the same 100 years ago, 500 years ago. But if that sort of building frustration with someone else that you live closely with is then tied up with a misfortune or Inexplicable misfortune. That's where these suspicions arise and that's how many trials started or many sort of reputations. But alongside that, we do have what we call kind of a folkloric witch or village witch. And these are stereotypical and by stereotype they're nearly always women, of course, Whereas your conflict witch could be a male, could be young, could be old, it all depends on the context. But your folkloric witch is this classic stereotype. She looks like a witch, walks like a witch, she lives like a witch, she's alone, she's a widow, she's elderly, you know, she has pets and cats, she has a, you know, she has a toad in a pot or whatever, you know, so she has all the attributes that we feed into our sort of fantasies today and representations of what is a witch. You know, pointy hats and everything. Absolute stereotypes. And these people sometimes were real people and who after their death live on as these sorts of legendary witches. And they can fly and all sorts of tales and stories told about what they did and didn't do. These people were practically never people who were prosecuted. They're a different genre. You can be witch like without ever being accused of witchcraft. And so if you understand those two sort of types of witch, you can start unpicking the ways in which the two can also allide with each other. And you do sometimes get this in some of the witch trial records. But they are quite two distinct genres. So, yeah, when we talk about a witch in folklore, we are talking about different categories.
- [28:21]
Kerry Holbrook
You also have, which is the similar, similar with the folkloric, which is the, you know, the witch of popular culture that certainly lives on today and kind of keeps those kind of folkloric beliefs about what the witch is going, but also changes it. You know, if you think about witches in popular culture today, they're often kind of the opposite of that folkloric, which they've kind of flipped it on the head that it's the good witch, it's the kind of the young beautiful witch. And popular culture does a huge amount for our folkloric beliefs. And yeah, it's going to continue. So, yeah, it'd be very, very interesting to see what the witch will look like in 50 years time, depending on what TV shows are popular then.
- [28:59]
Matt Elton
One of the aspects about folklore that I was interested particularly in is the idea of folk being, if you like common people in inverted commas. Were these rituals a way of expressing or demonstrating tension between authority figures and non authority figures?
- [29:18]
Owen Davies
There is a certain Sort of calendar points where there's a moment where there's a degree of which you know, authority can be subverted. We obviously see that with Guy Fawkes. So when you go back to Guy Fawkes celebrations 150 years ago when the authorities are really starting to try and suppress it because of the idea of disorder on the streets, particularly by young men. But Guy Fawkes was used just as in Lewes. Today the well known bonfire picks up on international and national political figures. In the past, Guy force could be used to, you know, have a go at disliked civic dignitary. You know, the Guy can be paraded around a house of someone who you really think needs to, you know, be getting a bit of stick. So that's one example. But we have what we call non calendar festivals of practice which are all about ostracizing a member of the community for transgressing morals what's deemed to be bad behavior. And so this is the idea of rough music. It's got all sorts of names across the Skimmington's is another one riding the Stang. It's all the same. It's basically saying, well you know, we understand that the vicar is having an affair with his servant for example, or we know that the butcher's been selling bad meat or someone, you know, the grocer's being basically using dodgy weights. And we're all, you know, these aren't good people in our community. So they will use ritual performance to do this. And so you have a burning of bonfires taking place with the effigy, the effigy is paraded around. Then you have the rough music which is beating pots and pans sometimes night after night outside the person who you are trying to basically ostracize. So yeah, it's a bit like the equivalent of the stocks. The ways in which a community can show a degree of authority without the authorities. Sometimes the authorities do step in and stop this stuff. But quite often, particularly in provincial towns and villages, the police constable is going, it's not worth my job to intervene. We'll just let this go and let it just run its course. So yeah, that's a strong part. And you know, whenever you talk to people about that they go, that's a good idea. And you think well is it, is it really, is it really a good idea? You know, because often this is based on rumor anyway. It was practiced right again right through into the 1910s, 1920s when we get really the last of these sort of rough musics taking place in Communities, and they did take place, they adapted. This isn't just a rural thing. We did a study years ago about Hertfordshire and rough music. And actually most of the rough music were in the sort of towns that were coming part of London, like Watford. So this isn't just about some old rural custom, it's actually about people rather.
- [31:56]
Kerry Holbrook
Than place and has obviously parallels with social media today and kind of cancel culture. And, you know, if you get somebody who's in the public eye doing something wrong, you know, within seconds that splashed over social media and headlines. So you're getting something similar today, less ritualized, but, you know, serves the same purpose. Another example is children and how they use kind of folk custom and ritual to kind of get themselves a bit of authority or get themselves a little bit of power. One of the things I really enjoyed researching was the customer, barring out where school children, they didn't have kind of a guaranteed Christmas holidays, for instance. So when they decided it was time, they would just take over the school, bar out the schoolmaster and say that they'd only let them in if they promised them a holiday. The same example there of kind of a folk group saying, no, we want something. You're not giving us any kind of agency, any power. So we're using this kind of ritualized practice to get what we want, to get a little bit of power. So, yeah, we've talked a little bit.
- [33:00]
Matt Elton
About this, but do you think that the folklore of urban areas continues to be undertold and under focused on?
- [33:07]
Owen Davies
Certainly. I mean, I could talk about the history of it, whereas Kerry can talk about the, the contemporary aspect of it. Long and short of it is British folklorers did not go into the towns and cities because they did not think there was any folklore there. I mean, there is only one folklorist really, a guy called Edward Lovett who lived in Croydon, who said, actually, I think there's some really interesting material to be collected in. And so, you know, in, in the towns and cities. So he, he's a pioneer because he went to the East End of London and to the docks and taught. He talked to the people, talked to the barrow boys, he talked to the shopkeepers and recorded a wealth of folklore. And he made the point himself. He said, well, look, actually I've asked these people, you know, roughly half of them came from countryside, they migrated here. So yes, you know, there are complex folklore going on, he said, in the early 20th century parts of London, but otherwise it's practically nothing because they didn't think it was there. This is A big, glaring hole in the archives of British folklore. When you think that by 1900, 75% of the population is considered to be urban, and yet the folklorists were ignoring.
- [34:09]
Kerry Holbrook
Yeah, and I think today folklorists are much more aware of folklore in urban areas, much more interested in it. But I feel like the people who are practicing it don't recognize it as folklore. They're still going back to what we said earlier, this idea of folklore being rural and that continues into the present. The idea that things like dancing around the maypole or Morris dancing in a village is folklore, but things like the Notting Hill Carnival aren't folklore. That sense prevails, even though in a folklorist's mind, they're exactly the same thing. They're all folklore. But I do think that whether it's popular media or just this inherited sense of what folklore is, it's not being recognized even by the people who are practicing it.
- [34:55]
Matt Elton
Are there any stories that we've not told so far from either the deeper past or the more recent periods that you think we should focus on or that you think tell us something about this wider topic?
- [35:07]
Kerry Holbrook
Yeah, I mean, children as a folk group have. I mean, they've interested folklorists for a very, very long time, but it's really hard to kind of access child lore, as in the folklore that children share amongst themselves, the customs that they practice away from adults, without adults interfering with. And I think often people don't think of children when we say folklore, but they're kind of a significant part of our population, and they do do things that we don't know about or we don't fully understand. 6, 7 being one of the most recent examples, you know, and how that's kind of widespread. Children globally are saying this term that adults just don't understand and we don't get it. But one of the ways that we can access kind of child law historically and today is through material culture, through objects. We can see kind of the games that children play, the stor that they tell, and, you know, the folk art that they're producing. Again, what we wouldn't call folk art. These objects don't find their way into museums or art galleries because they're often overlooked. Their value is overlooked. But sticks are my absolute favorite thing to think about, because to a child, a stick is so many different things. Whether that's, you know, and there are so many historical sources that describe children using a stick as a sword, for instance, or a flag, or today, they're lightsabers, they're swords, they're magic wands and they're dens and. Yeah, so sticks are something that, you know, we've had as long as we've had trees, and we continue to have them. And. Yeah, they're a brilliant book, but very overlooked example of children's folk art into.
- [36:44]
Matt Elton
This newly broadened idea of what folklore is. Can we fit seemingly 21st century things like ghost tours and I suppose online conspiracy theories and us, do they all fit within this category as well?
- [36:58]
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- [36:58]
Owen Davies
We think so. And the way in which you can explore them as a. As a folklorister, in folkloric ways is by thinking of the concept of legend tripping, which is something that Carrie's worked on, if you want to explain legend tripping, Kerry.
- [37:09]
Kerry Holbrook
Yeah, so legend tripping is. Is. Is really just visiting a site that has some kind of legend or character associated with it. Often supernatural, but. But not always. And, yeah, taking a trip there with the hope that you'll experience something or even just the aim of kind of acting out the narrative that you've heard. And ghost tours are a perfect example of this. You're going to these places because there's a belief that they're haunted and that.
- [37:36]
Owen Davies
Is Loch Ness Monster. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [37:38]
Kerry Holbrook
Loch Ness Monster is a no.
- [37:39]
Owen Davies
Legend tripping, you know, classic example. I might just see Nessie. You never know. So, yeah, that idea of participating in belief, if you see what I mean, you're not necessarily the one who has experienced it, but you hope you might. And that leads you to go and look at UFO sites as another example, you know, hotspots or. When we had the crop circle phenomenon in the 1980s, early 1990s, ten thousands of people, people came from all over the world to try and see if they could feel something by being in or near crop circles. That's something that England gave to the world. Crop circles in recent folklore. And it drew upon heavily upon folklore, narratives, motifs.
- [38:18]
Matt Elton
Again, another thing you mention in the book is the period during the pandemic when everyone went outside their houses and clapped. That's another example of ritual behavior, if you like. Is that right?
- [38:28]
Kerry Holbrook
Absolutely. Yeah. We were doing so many things during lockdown that are ritual, and we look back on them now and we can't quite believe that we did them. But in the time. In the time, that's kind of what got us through, that brought us together. The teddy bears in the windows and the pandemic pythons, you know, the snakes of painted rocks. It was a way to feel part of a community. So, yeah, drawing on ritual was, yeah, a really important part of getting us through lockdown.
- [38:55]
Matt Elton
Do you think the impulses in the 21st century that lead people towards these sort of stories and these sort of customs are largely the same as they would have been in the medieval era, for instance, or has something shifted across that time?
- [39:07]
Owen Davies
I mean, there are sort of basic impulses around fear and comfort, these sorts of concepts and emotions and excitement, you know, things doing something collective together, doing something individual, which is your own secret ritual or whatever. So these are kind of human traits, characteristic human traits, fundamental aspects of who we are and why we want to do things and how we think. But at the same time, there's obviously, we are all shaped by the environment around us. We're all shaped by macro level things. Particularly. I think if you're talking about the contrast between medieval and now, you think about social media and the Internet, the things we've just been talking about. The way in which rumor can spread so quickly to millions within minutes is a very different thing. So when folklorists are thinking about how do stories transmit themselves, how do ideas and beliefs and traditions migrate? Well, the Internet today can lead to communities developing virtually, you know, from multiple nations. And coming up, QAnon is a classic example of a whole set of motifs and beliefs which you can trace back. You know, the idea of devil worship and things like that. I mean, some of this stuff you can trace back to, you know, witch trials stuff. And here it is in a contemporary context, but developing in a virtual environment. So that's one big way. But other people would come up with climate change as something which is obviously transformative and will impact on how we think about folklore narratives and express folkloric concerns about the environment and our detachment from the environment and its destruction.
- [40:35]
Matt Elton
And finally, as we head into 2026, how would you like listeners to think about folklore and its future?
- [40:42]
Kerry Holbrook
I would like readers to see folklore as part of their everyday lives and to not see it as something that is experienced by others, but is something that's experienced by everyone. Everybody is a member of multiple folk groups. And folklore is something that has always changed, has been dynamic, has been political, has adapted as societies progressed, and it will continue to change. Nothing that we're practicing today will be practiced exactly the same way in 10 years, 20 years, because, yeah, folklore has to adapt to survive, just like people. So those are the key messages I'd like them to take away.
- [41:22]
Owen Davies
Yeah, and celebrate folklore, celebrate the breadth and depth of folklore. But all the same time, be wary of how folklore can be used for propagandistic and nationalistic purposes is that was.
- [41:35]
Matt Elton
Kerry Holbrook and Owen Davies in conversation with me, Matt Elton. Their new book, Folklore A Journey through the Past and Present, is out now, published by Manchester University.