Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart (Editors). Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland. Routledge, 2023.
The manner in which the collecting, study and publishing of folklore has influenced the understanding of national origins and identities has become a matter of concern to many in the field, who fear that the subject has been exploited for nationalist and political ends.
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The essays in this volume are based on papers delivered at the annual conference of the Folklore Society, in 2019, on the theme 'Folklore and the Nation', which Matthew Cheeseman describes in his introduction as “explor[ing] folklore and folkloristics within the diverse and contested national discourses of Britain and Ireland."
Terry Gunnell, a professor at the University of Iceland, outlines how at a time of rising nationalism the collecting and publishing activity of the Grimm brothers 'rippled out' from Germany to provide a model for the collection of folk tales and legends across Europe. He sees a distinction between how folklore and folktale collection and publishing developed in most of Continental Europe comparted to Great Britain, France and Sweden.
In countries like pre-unification Germany, Iceland, Norway and the Baltic lands the story collections were regarded as a way of creating and strengthening a national identity. The Icelandic collectors Jón Árnoon and Magnús Grímsson wrote in 1852, “These folktales are the poetic creation of the nation. In them we see both the nation's longing for history and the special feel that the nation's narratives tend to be veiled in.”
In England, France and Sweden there were no similar Grimm-like figures creating a national collection of such tales. Gunnell notes William Thoms ultimately unsuccessful call for material towards such a collection, which perhaps was only finalised by Katharine Briggs in 1970. In England and Sweden most folklore collection was based on local areas rather than the country as a whole, and mainly focussed on the areas which felt separated from the centralised state, like Scotland, Ireland, Wales and even the north of England.
David Clarke touches on this separation when examining the legacy of two figures in the folklore of Hallamshire, the area of South Yorkshire around Sheffield. He looks at the historical figure of the Saxon Earl Waltheof and the mythical outlaw Robin Hood. These two characters have become blurred into one, the Earl of Huntingdon. The Earl is seen as a local Saxon hero holding out against the occupying forces of the Norman French invaders, and has been conscripted to depict the region as having a tradition of “autonomous, radical and even revolutionary behaviour” expressed in modern times both in resistance to central government policies and a stronghold of the Brexit vote in 2016.
Robin Hood appears also in Carina Hart's chapter looking at the image of the heroic outlaw as part of the 'folkloric landscape', with Robin Hood again becoming an image of the 'free-born Englishman', often in relationship to England's historic opposition to France, and the perceived assault on commoner's rights in the Industrial Revolution and the Enclosures. Hart sees this folkloric image being reappropriated in recent years by the very contrasting figures of Boris Johnson and the Extinction Rebellion protestors.
Questions of authenticity in folklore study and practice are addressed in two chapters which look at the English folksong and dance revivals in the early twentieth century and the arguments for either strictly adhering to the earliest recorded versions of the song or dance, or allowing freedom for the further evolution of the tradition. This produced some complex political arguments. Was the strict adherence to tradition looking backwards to an outdated view of 'Merrie England', or was it, in the aftermath of the First World War a rejection of imperialism and a celebration of collective endeavour on a smaller national or regional scale?
One character who certainly took the latter view was Joseph Needham (1900-1995) a biochemist and expert of the history of Chinese science. He was attracted to the ministry of Conrad Noel – the 'Red Vicar' of Thaxted – who promoted a form of particularly English Christian Socialism. Needham saw morris-dancing as an essential part of his utopian vision. The chapter's author, Matt Simons described Needham's view of morris-dancing as “a manifestation of [...] 'the essential materialism of Christianity' as though the dance itself was a sacrament”. To Needham the morris-dance formed part of an “international unity consisting of a sustained multitude of distinctive national identities”. Simons concludes “Needham's dancing represented his own understanding of a radical, working class, culture”.
A very different approach to nationalism and folklore arose in Scotland in the 1920s and 30s. The Scottish Anthropological Society began as a breakaway from the UK-wide Royal Anthropological Society. One of its aims was a 'racial and ethnographic survey' of Scotland, but although this was something that had been attempted by other such societies in the past, by the 1930s the idea of the scientific classification of racial and ethnic characteristics was becoming linked too closely with Nazi ideas of 'racial science'. Many members of the society were alarmed by the SAS's proposals, and noted that the survey being compiled was based on a questionnaire from a European association that had fallen under the influence of Nazi organisations. Eventually after the intervention of the Folklore Society and the Royal Anthropological Society - and ironically the Free Church of Scotland on the grounds that it was 'teaching evolution' - it closed down as a research organisation, continuing after the Second World War as a publisher and lecture society.
Several other contributors look at the borders of folklore and politics. Tabitha Peterken's report on British fishermen's attitude to Brexit and the EU seems an odd fit in this volume, but the use of traditional folk motifs, songs and rituals for political purposes seems to be prevalent across the political spectrum. Andrew Fergus Wilson describes the way the far-right British Movement attempted to form a 'native' British religion by commandeering images and icons from largely Norse mythology. The problems of the boundaries between genuine belief in Pagan and Wiccan paths and their political exploitation are explored by Kate Smith, particularly in the ambiguous nature of the 'Charming of the Plough' ceremony of the Odinic Rite.
Other contributions which will be of particular interest to Magonians include Paul Cowdell's examination of the role Margaret Murray's witchcraft theories played as the 'MacGuffin' in Miles Burton's 1939 novel, High Elversham, and how the theme of remnant or revived 'pagan' rituals was used by novelists long after Murray's ideas were discredited academically. Cowdell suggests that Murray's own later work was coloured by her seeing the popularity of her earlier ideas in novels and films. Diane Rodgers' chapter, 'Et in Arcadia Ego', carries on from this with an examination of the use of similar motifs in the contemporary British 'folk horror' genre in film and television.
Although centred around the examination of folklore as an expression of nation and history, this collection presents a wide-ranging analysis of the topic from disparate viewpoints. One or two of the essays stray into the thickets of academic 'discourse', but many others, particularly Jeremy Harte's fascinating account of the role of the wood and the wolf in shaping English landscape and society, are both entertaining an informative. Perhaps overall not for the legendary 'general reader' but few Magonia readers will find nothing of interest in this collection.
- Richard Samuels
For an example of the use of the Margaret Murray 'McGuffin' read this review of a survey of 'folk horror' detective novels from women writers:
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