‘There wis a lady dressed in green’: William Montgomerie’s recordings of children in the streets of Dundee, 1952 A Folklore Society online talk by Prof. Margaret Bennett (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) Tuesday 7 March 2023, 18:00 GMT William Montgomerie and his wife Norah began collecting childlore in the 1920s and 30s as they were interested...
Spring-heeled Jack on the Continent A Folklore Society online talk by Dr Petr Janeček (Charles University, Prague) Tuesday 21 February 2023, 18:00 GMT Spring-heeled Jack is one of the most peculiar demonic beings of British folklore. Since the beginning of the 20th century, legends about this mysterious urban phantom reached Continental Europe and adapted to...
‘She could sit and spin those stories all night!’: The Midwife Effie Currie (1867-1942), Her Hero Tales and Women Storytellers in Gaelic Tradition A Folklore Society Online talk by Dr Tiber Falzett (University College Dublin) Tuesday 7 February 2023, 18:00 GMT This talk will focus on a collection of a dozen hero tales taken from...
Dead Men Tell Tales: Bogs, Bog Bodies, and Bog Queens A Folklore Society online talk by Sophia Kingshill Tuesday 24 January 2023 at 18:00 GMT Peat bogs have a remarkable power of preservation.Bodies dating from the Iron Age, dug up from bogs in Denmark, Germany, Ireland and the UK, have been mistaken for recent murder...
Gliding in the Churchway Paths: Corpse Roads and the Origins of the Right to Roam A Folklore Society online talk, by Professor Stuart Dunn (King’s College London) Tuesday 10 January 2023, 18:00 Burial of the dead posed a problem in the medieval and early modern countryside: getting the body from the place of death to...
Dr Ceri Houlbrook (University of Hertfordshire) explores the tradition of children writing letters to Santa Claus. Online talk, Tuesday 13 December 2022, 18:00 This talk traces the history of the folkloric custom of writing letters to Santa Claus and other Western personifications of Christmas. When did it start? Where is it practiced? What folklore surrounds...