The Concealed Revealed, a strand of the Inner Lives: Emotion, Identity and the Supernatural, 1300-1900 Project, is hoping to produce an extensive catalogue of concealed objects and domestic apotropaic devices, from shoes and cats to timber marks, across Britain. Dr Ceri Houlbrook, of the University of Hertfordshire, is not only seeking information about these objects but is also aiming to...
Francis Young was talking about his article on St Edmund in popular memory, recently published in Folklore vol. 126, on BBC Radio 4’s Making History programme, Tuesday 4 August 2015. To listen again or download the podcast, visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0640mxz
We are very sad to report the death on 10 August of Norman Peacock, Morris and sword dance researcher and long-time donor to The Folklore Society.
Folklore vol.126/2, 2015, now out. Contents: On Mermaids, Meroveus and Melusine, by Gregory Darwin; An Irish Motif in ‘Guta saga’, by Kristen Mills; St Edmund, King and Martyr in Popular Memory since the Reformation, by Francis Young; Edmund Jones and the Pwcca’r Trwyn, by Adam N. Coward; ‘Them Owls Know’: Portending Death in Later Nineteenth-...
http://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/08/he-coined-the-word-folk-lore/ William John Thoms (1803-1885) was a founder member of The Folklore Society and coined the word ‘folk-lore’ in English. Read Stephen Winick’s ‘He coined the word “Folk-Lore”’ on Library of Congress ‘Folklife Today’ blog, and see also Jonathan Roper’s article ‘Thoms and the Unachieved “Folk-Lore of England‘ in our journal Folklore. We put a wreath on Thoms’s grave at Brompton...
We had a really good turn out to hear lots of great papers at our conference at the University of Exeter, 26-28 June. Thanks to our keynote speaker Nick Groom, we were entertained brilliantly on Friday evening by the Ramsley Pace-Eggers (see a clip on Youtube here) and on Saturday evening by the Beltane Border Morris...
Ron Payne Dr Jacqueline Simpson’s obituary for Sir Terry Pratchett, who died 12 March 2015, will appear in the August issue of our journal Folklore. A conversation about folklore between Sir Terry and Jacqueline was recorded in 2010. listen again to the podcast and read the transcript.
Diane Goldstein, ‘“Cry, Lady, Cry!” Maternal Infanticide Narratives and the Vernacular Construction of Blame’, 19 November 2014 at The Warburg Institute. Many thanks Diane for a wonderful lecture