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Blog

The Katharine Briggs Award 2015

With great pleasure, we announce that The Katharine Briggs Award 2015 was won by Richard P. Jenkins for his book Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland 1972-74, published by Cork University Press. Runner up: David Atkinson and Steve Roud (eds.), Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland and North America. The Interface between Print and Oral...

The Katharine Briggs Award 2015: Shortlisted entries

The following books, in alphabetical order, have been shortlisted for this year’s Katharine Briggs Award. The judges’ decision will be announced at a wine reception and buffet supper on Wednesday 18 November following our annual Katharine Briggs Lecture starting at 6.30 p.m. at The Warburg Institute. To book, contact [email protected]. Atkinson, David, and Steve Roud...

The Concealed Revealed

​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 on St Edmund

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

Norman Peacock

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, no.2, 2015

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-...

William John Thoms

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...

Calendar Customs and Seasonal Events conference

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...