Devoted to the Study of Folklore and Tradition

Doc Rowe very kindly filmed the 2022 Katharine Briggs Lecture, given at Conway Hall, London, on Tuesday 8 November at 18:30, by Katherine Langrish: ‘Fenrir’s Fetter and the Power of Stories.’ Doc’s film can be watched on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID3KbgJiimw

Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain: Exhibition 11 February to 11 June 2023, at Compton Verney Review by Sophia Kinsghill This exhibition displays costumes from around Britain and across the seasons, from historic relics to modern creations, from nostalgic evocation of rural community to the glamour of carnival. Curators Simon Costin, Mellany Robinson, and Amy...

North Lincolnshire Museum at Scunthorpe holds important collections of materials of interest to scholars of Lincolnshire folklore: The Ethel Rudkin Collection, with all her publications, her library of folklore and history books, plus photographs, notes and ephemera: https://northlincolnshiremuseum.co.uk/discover/ethel-rudkin-1893-1984/ The Peacock family archive, with diaries, photographs, correspondence, notes relating to folklorist Mabel Peacock, and to her...

Oxford University Morris and Oxford City Morris have produced a new booklet to mark this year’s centenary of the annual Morris dancing on May morning in Oxford. Download the pdf here  

We are very pleased to announce that our Estella Canziani Post-graduate Bursary for Research 2023 has been awarded to Claire Slack (DHeritage, University of Hertfordshire) for her research project: ‘Sharing Sacred Spaces: Engagements with the Contemporary Heritage of British Pagan Sacred Sites.’ Congratulations Claire, we look forward to receiving your report and ‘postcard from the...

Randwick Wap 2022 Field Study Report by Jessica Lloyd Thanks to the Estella Canziani Post-graduate Bursary for Research 2022, I was able to undertake field research on 7th May 2022 at the Randwick Wap in Gloucestershire in order to understand the custom and its meaning to those in attendance. This was conducted as the first...

I was delighted to receive the Estella Canziani Postgraduate Bursary for Research this year, which facilitated an archive visit I took in mid-July to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House. My PhD thesis explores the influence of the old songs upon newly composed traditional folk music in the twenty-first century, with tropes...

Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year to all  

We are delighted to announce that the winner of The Katharine Briggs Award 2022 is: Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft: Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century, Edited by Marina Montesano, and published by Routledge. Congratulations Marina. We also congratulate the three joint runners-up: Martin Graebe (ed.), The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames: Folk Songs from...

We were delighted to attend and set up our Folklore Society stand at the ISFNR Interim hybrid Conference 2022: “Folk Narrative and the Visual Arts”, at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, in July this year. The papers were excellent and it was a lovely occasion to meet old friends and...

Following the sad news of the death of the Queen, we went to pay our respects and to see the floral tributes that people have been placing outside Buckingham Palace.  

In this episode of BBC R4’s Princess series, our own Dr Juliette Wood and MP Stella Creasy talk with Anita Anand about the origins and folklore of Walt Disney’s Princesses, including Elsa from Frozen; first broadcast 4 July 2022, listen again on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0cjrpx7