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.
Blog
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...
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...
Jacqueline Simpson and Sir Terry Pratchett
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.
The Katharine Briggs Lecture 2014
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
Newer Researchers in Folklore 20 Nov 2014
Many thanks to Diane Goldstein and all the participants in our Newer Researchers’ one-day conference. Lots of new ideas were shared, contacts made and plans begun for further ventures. Let’s do it again next year!
The Katharine Briggs Award 2014
We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2014 Katharine Briggs Award is David Atkinson, for his book The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts, published by OpenBook Publishers. Congratulations David. Runners-up: Jackie Marsh and Julia C. Bishop, Changing Play: Play, Media and Commercial Culture from the 1950s to the Present Day, Open University Press. Here are...