I saw a peacock with a fiery tail, and may this bread choke me if the moon landings were not filmed on Mars. When the crows flew off, they lifted the tree over nine red-hot ploughshares. Helen was never at Troy at all, she was hidden in an old manuscript drawer disguised as Duke...
Violet Alford’s Pyrenean Festivals and Antonin Artaud’s Peyote Dance: Travels in Search of Authentic Performance A Folklore Society Online Talk by Prof. Peter Harrop (University of Chester) Tuesday 9 September 2025, 19:00 BST In the 1930s, an English folklorist and a French theatre director, made individual journeys in search of authentic performance. The English folklorist...
The Soldier’s Tale The Folklore Society Presidential Address 2025 by Professor David Hopkin Tuesday 16 September, 17:30-18:30 BST ‘Down a hot and dusty road Tramps a soldier with his load.’ Igor Stravinsky and Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, The Soldier’s Tale (1917) Following my 2024 lecture on ‘The Sailor’s Tale’, in this address I look at another occupational group–soldiers–who were...
50 Years of Plant-Lore Collecting A Folklore Society online talk by Roy Vickery Tuesday 23 September 2025 19:00-20:30 (BST) In the 1970s, Roy Vickery, a professional botanist, became dissatisfied by the publications then available on the folklore of plants. All too often these regurgitated Victorian material, and there was an overriding implication that our ancestors...
The Newer Researchers Day brings together researchers from all disciplines with an interest in folklore practice and study. It is a workshop intended to celebrate, share, and develop skills in the innovative ways in which many researchers are approaching contemporary living tradition. Experts will run informative and interactive sessions on material culture of folklore, fieldwork,...
Underground Folklore of Britain and Ireland–Sacred Sites A Folklore Society online talk, by Joanne McFall Tuesday 7 October 2025, 19:00-20:30 This talk will present and discuss six major sacred sites in Great Britain and Ireland. Many were created in Neolithic times, becoming vital sites in Celtic times and still utilised in the present day. The...
Artist Fee Greening in conversation: Katharine Briggs’s Dictionary of Fairies A Folklore Society Online Talk by Fee Greening Tuesday 7 October 2025, 19:00 BST Fee Greening is an illustrator whose work has been inspired by Gothic fairytale and medieval illuminations. The Folklore Society is delighted to announce the publication of her illustrated edition of Katharine...
From a Cornfield to the Gothic: An Appreciation of the Scarecrow A Folklore Society online talk by Juliette Wood Tuesday 21 October 2025, 19:00-20:30 What is it about the scarecrow that gives it such potential? Does it depend on its position in folk culture, or on an ancient meaning or ritual usage, or because we...
‘Revisiting Oral Narrative: Anthropology, Folklore and History’ Ninth ‘Folklore and Anthropology in Conversation’ Joint Seminar The Folklore Society and The Royal Anthropological Institute The Royal Anthropological Institute and The Folklore Society host jointly an annual conference series ‘Folklore and Anthropology in Conversation’ which encourages empirical and conceptual dialogue between the two related disciplines of folklore and...
Sally the Seal, Roboto, and Other Traditional Helper Figures in Family Life A Folklore Society online talk by Simon Gall Tuesday 4 November, 19:00 GMT Folklorists and ethnologists have long written about how parents borrow, adapt, and use traditional figures to engage their children in various ways. John Widdowson, for example, wrote about the great...
The Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Lecture and Book Award 2025 will take place on Tuesday 11 November, 6.30pm, at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. Our lecturer this year is Professor Terry Gunnell, Professor Emeritus in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland, who will talk about ‘Returning the Legends to the Landscape and...
On Social Life and Stories: Traditional Tale-Telling in 1970s Rural Iceland A Folklore Society Online Talk by Rosemary Power Monday 1 December 2025, 19:00-20:30 The talk covers some of the aspects of life in an Icelandic valley in the period in question, with knowledge of folklife and practice, farming changes, songs, singing-style, oral anecdotes and...
More new Folklore Society events coming soon!