Online talk by Dr Paul Cowdell (University of Hertfordshire), Tuesday 8 June 2021, 18:00–19:30 November 23rd is St Clement’s day. The patron saint of blacksmiths, his day was celebrated by processions, dinners, effigies, poetry and appeals for money at village forges and, more rowdily, at dockyard smithies. It also merged with similar celebrations 2 days...
By popular demand, another chance to hear Sophia Kingshill’s talk Mermaids: Fish, Flesh or Fowl, online on Tuesday 30 November 2021, 18:00-19:30 GMT What is a mermaid? Nothing so simple as a woman with a fish’s tail. Mythology, symbolism, literature, art, folktale and ballad have all influenced her development, and male attitudes to women are...
The rescheduled Folklore, Learning and Literacies conference will be online, Friday 21 to Sunday 23 May 2021 Keynote speaker: Prof. Michael Rosen: ‘”Don’t say that!” – how my parents negotiated Yiddish.’ (Friday 21st) In this talk, Michael Rosen explores how his parents who had both come from Yiddish-speaking households, retained many Yiddish phrases and words...
An online talk for The Folklore Society by James H. Grayson (School of East Asian Studies, Sheffield University). A semiotic analysis of postage stamp designs incorporating folkloric themes will explore how governments use postal imagery for political purposes. Stamps are miniature government documents, the semiotic analysis of which reveals different ways in which governments have...
An online talk for The Folklore Society, by David Hopkin (Professor of European Social History, University of Oxford) Soldiers’ storytelling inculcated military values. Recorded by folklorists, their tales influenced literary developments in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Oral storytelling is often associated with ‘Mother Goose’ figures, elderly and female, but when folktale collecting started in the aftermath of...
Exploring the imagined life story of a seventeenth-century witch bottle through animation. An online talk for The Folklore Society. In the summer of 2020 Nigel Jeffries (Museum of London Archaeology), Owen Davies (President of the Folklore Society), and animator Laura-Beth Cowley (University of the West of England) teamed up to explore the imagined life story...
Traditions of Death and Burial: Exploring English death and burial customs from the medieval era to the present day. an online talk by Dr Helen Frisby Tuesday 9 March 2021 18:00–19:30 GMT Death has been a source of grief and uncertainty for humanity throughout history, but it has also been the inspiration for a plethora...
Folklore and Anthropology in Conversation: The Sixth Joint Seminar of The Folklore Society and The Royal Anthropological Institute ‘Creativity during the Covid lockdown: Life and Renewal During the Pandemic’ A Virtual, Two-Day Conference Date: Thursday 7 and Friday 8 October, 2021. Time: 10 AM to 5:30 PM. The Royal Anthropological Institute, and The Folklore Society...
The Katharine Briggs Lecture, which was postponed from November 2020, will take place as an online lecture via Zoom on Tuesday 23 February 2021 from 17:00. The lecture will be given by Dr Juliette Wood (University of Cardiff): ‘“I Cannot Find the Hanged Man”: Tarot Cards in Fantastic Fiction’. This will be followed by the...
The Sky in Legend and Tradition The Fifteenth Legendary Weekend of The Folklore Society Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th September 2021 The Medieval Hall in Cathedral Close, Salisbury SP1 2EY The flying pigs are knocking on Heaven’s door while thunderbirds circle the Merry Dancers and a woman standing on the moon bends over Endymion. Dragons...