Royal Funerals: A History A Folklore Society online talk by Helen Frisby Tuesday 4 March 2025, 19:00 GMT This talk with Dr Helen Frisby, author of the Shire book Traditions of Death and Burial, explores the funeral customs of English/British monarchs from Anglo-Saxon times to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. Some of...
Elias Ashmole and the Cottingley Fairies: from ‘An Excellent Way To Gett A Fayrie’ to Princess Mary’s Gift Book A Folklore Society online talk by John Clark (Curator Emeritus, Museum of London) Tuesday 18 March 2025, 19:00 The three butterfly-winged ‘dancing fairies’ in the first photograph taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths at Cottingley Beck...
Folklore and the Digital: One-day Online Conference Saturday 29 March, 09:30-17:30 GMT Following on from our ‘Digital Folklore’ conference in June 2024, we are holding a one-day online conference ‘Folklore and the Digital’, looking at the digitisation of folklore collections, large language models, digital tools in preserving folk traditions and creating new ones, social media...
Lucy Broadwood (1858-1928): the Challenges and Compromises of a Folk Song Collector A Folklore Society online talk by Chris Hare Tuesday 1 April 2025, 19:00 BST Lucy Broadwood was a pioneering folk song collector, who was active in the field from the 1880s until her death in 1929. She had a broad range of musical...
Tarot and Cartomancy in France from the French Revolution to the Twentieth Century A Folklore Society Online Talk by Dr William Pooley (University of Bristol) Tuesday 15 April, 19:00 BST The earliest evidence of fortune-telling using playing cards in Europe dates to 1765. By 1789 and the start of the French Revolution, a veritable epidemic...
Scandinavian Changelings A Folklore Society online talk by Tommy Kuusela Tuesday 6 May, 19:00 BST A Scandinavian belief in changelings can be traced from the Middle Ages until fairly recent times. Stories about changelings were still being recorded by folklore collectors as late as the 1900s. People have actively believed that a supernatural being could...
Seafarers and Sea-Fearing: Nineteenth-Century Maritime Folklore A Folklore Society Online Talk by Dr Karl Bell (University of Portsmouth) Tuesday 20 May, 19:00 BST Focusing on maritime folklore in the 19th-century Atlantic, this talk considers the ocean as both a natural and supernatural space, one full of signs, omens, and otherworldly encounters. Given the way mariners...
The Mountain Who Stumbled, the Lake Who Eats Girls, and The Beast Who Guards the Plantation: Some Notes on the Other-than-Human Beings who Inhabit Guatemala’s Verapaz A Folklore Society Online Talk by Eric Hoenes del Pinal (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) Tuesday 3 June 2025, 19:00 BST This talk will focus on stories about...
Connecting Folklore, History and Theory in the 21st Century: Irish Folklore A Folklore Society Online Talk by Prof. Sarah Covington (Queens College, New York) Tuesday 17 June, 19:00 BST This talk will use the folklore of Ireland as a way to urge scholars and students to think in new ways about the relationship between history and...
Folklore and the Senses The Folklore Society’s Annual Conference 2025, in collaboration with the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, University College Cork, Ireland. Friday 20 June to Sunday 22 June 2025 Hybrid conference, online and at University College Cork We know the world through our senses, but how we sense is inflected by symbolism, tradition...
Flying Saucery: How UFOs Landed in the British Isles A Folklore Society Online Talk by Dr David Clarke (Sheffield Hallam University), and Andrew Robinson (Sheffield Hallam University) Tuesday 1 July, 19:00 BST Sightings of and belief in the existence of Flying Saucers (later UFOs and now UAP) first began to emerge from the USA in 1947 and are...
Lying in Legend and Tradition: The Nineteenth Legendary Weekend of The Folklore Society Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 September, Tullie House, Carlisle, CA3 8TP 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...
Call for Papers: ‘Revisiting Oral Narrative: Anthropology, Folklore and History’ Ninth ‘Folklore and Anthropology in Conversation’ Joint Seminar The Folklore Society and The Royal Anthropological Institute Date: Thursday 23 October, 2025. Time: 10 AM to 5 PM. Location: 50 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 5BT and online via Zoom The annual seminar series ‘Folklore...
More new Folklore Society events coming soon!