Review by Helen Parry
Are you looking for a comprehensive introduction to British folklore by any chance? Then I have just the book for you. Folklore: A Journey through the Past and Present is a terrific overview of folklore in England, Wales and Scotland by a professor of social history and a senior lecturer in folklore and history at the University of Hertfordshire: people who know their stuff.
But first: what exactly is folklore? It’s one of those terms that is difficult to define, although we all think we know what it is. Acknowledging that what we consider folklore ‘has to be revised as societies and cultures change’, Davies and Houlbrook state:
we use folklore to mean the generation, transmission, and enaction of traditions as a creative process, communicated through oral, literary, visual, and digital means.
The folkloric past is elusive. It’s only visible to us when it has been recorded somewhere by an actual witness. This means it can be very difficult to pin down how widespread a practice might have been, where and when it began, and when it ended. There is a fair amount of folklore about folklore, if you like. That Jack-in-the-Green might not be quite as ancient as you imagine. And if the folklore of adult communities is hard to find, the folklore of children is almost impossible because it is a secret world, hidden from adult eyes and not necessarily accurately recalled in adulthood.
To exist, folklore needs to be practised, renewed. We often think of folklore as only the last remaining rags of an old and rural past, but Davies and Houlbrook point out that it is constantly being created as a necessary component of society:
While this book does explore the dwindling of a folkloric past, it will also demonstrate that folklore is a vibrant and ever-developing facet of British society and culture, forever being invented and reinvigorated through new cultural influences, from pandemic clapping to love-locks and ghost tours to internet memes. […] We need to move on from popular associations of folklore with the rustic past and see British folklore as contemporary and multicultural.
In fact, we can learn a great deal about our current society through studying folklore.
The authors take a broad approach, looking at many aspects of social life and organising their wealth of material into themes: the ritual year, performance, storytelling, the natural world, medicine, the supernatural, domestic life, modern media, the internet. Some striking facts: many of our festive traditions are not terribly old; wife auctions like the ones in The Mayor of Casterbridge were usually symbolic and a way of signifying divorce; although our ancestors may have lived closer to the land than most of us do, they were not necessarily any better at distinguishing a cuckoo from a sparrowhawk or a slow worm from an adder; folk medicine was pretty wild and, if you were a toad, frankly terrifying.
What I most enjoyed from this book was the wealth of detail. Here you will find descriptions of milkmaids and sweeps dancing through London on May Day, strange ideas about disease (including a Norfolk woman with neuritis who explained to her GP it was caused by a centipede who had climbed into her body via a wound and been travelling around inside her for years before finally escaping with its young while she was in hospital – ‘Beauties they were too. They’d have took a prize anywhere’); and creepypasta, including a strange YouTube film called ‘Creepy fairy insect – UK’ which apparently shows a fairy live on film.
Many folkloric traditions bring out people’s playfulness, even rebelliousness, featuring drinking, dancing, cross-dressing and effigies or figures like the Mari Lywd or Jack-in-the-Green. In addition to being fun, they are often very creative solutions to anxieties or problems. For example, begging was outlawed but calendar customs, such as souling, wassailing, Clementing and Thomasing, provided a ritualised means of doing so during the hard winter months. Thus arable workers feeling the pinch could go from house to house singing or mumming in exchange for food or money.
There is often a tension between the practices of the folk – which could tip over into violence and included some nasty forms of blood sport – and the concerns of the authorities to keep the peace, which could result in sanitisation or suppression of some customs. For this reason, practically all the charter fairs were abolished in the nineteenth century, you can no longer stone a cockerel to death on Shrove Tuesday and nobody rolls flaming barrels through the streets any more on Bonfire Night. Over time, some practices adapt to new mores: a good example being the disappearance of black-face from Morris dancing, without any detriment to the dancing at all.
Although some folk traditions are very local, taken together they are often used to create a sense of national identity. Davies and Coulbrook show that this sense can be adapted by communities within Britain – such as Hindu and Muslim families creating their own traditions for Christmas Day – and can be welcoming of fresh influences – the Diwali festivities in Leicester or the Notting Hill carnival, for instance. And in the diaspora, Welsh and Scots traditions continue. The celebration of British – specifically English – folklore can be and sometimes is subsumed into a toxic form of nationalism, yet this book shows how it can also inclusive and contribute to an identity we can all share.
If I have a criticism, it is that music and song, including traditional ballads, did not merit more attention. However, as a rich and fascinating overview and introduction to British folklore this book is really essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. I know I’ll be returning to my copy again and again.
Helen blogs at A Gallimaufry
Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook, Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present (Manchester University Press, 2025). 978-1526180384, 320pp., hardback.
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