Prof. Richard Jenkins (University of Sheffield) asks ‘Who was Mother Shipton? Was she a real person? How did she end up as the theme of a visitor attraction in Knaresborough, Yorkshire?’ This talk will trace the development of ‘Mother Shipton’ as a legendary figure: from the prophetess of seventeenth-century Civil War pamphlets, to the presiding...
Dr Ceri Houlbrook (University of Hertfordshire), will talk about the Boggart of Boggart Hole Clough, Manchester. The Boggart was living quite happily in its nineteenth-century rural dell. But what happened when its rural dell became a Manchester suburb? Not far from the little snug smoky village of Blakeley, or Blackley, there lies one of the...
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...