Folklore of War and Peace: Virtual Special Issue 9, 2018
Virtual Special Issues of FolkloreVirtual Special Issues of Folklore are selections of articles from our journal on specific themes hand picked by the editor, Jessica Hemming, with a podcast introduction by reviews editor Juliette Wood, and a list of featured articles and further reading. These articles are all free for Folklore Society members to download.
Excerpt from the podcast:
The origin of one of the most famous supernatural legends of the First World War, the Angel of Mons, is discussed by David Clarke and Jacqueline Simpson (Clarke 2002; Simpson 2003; Clarke 2004). Clarke argues that this popular belief-legend was influenced by older martial traditions of divine intervention during battles and by Arthur Machen’s 1915 short story ‘The Bowman’, which Clarke describes as ‘a timely piece of patriotic wish fulfilment’ (2002, 154). However, this combination of fiction and rumour soon took hold, and Clarke and Simpson chart the resulting mixture of rumour and experience in the number of supposedly first-hand accounts and memorates of sightings of angels, St George, and strange figures in white that began to appear.
Featured articles from Folklore
Armistice Day: Folk Tradition in an English Festival of Remembrance, by Venetia Newall, vol. 87/2, 1976
‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’: Trench Culture of the Great War, by Graham Seal, vol. 124/2, 2013
Rumours of Angels: A Legend of the First World War, by David Clarke, vol. 113/2, 2002
Rumours of Angels: A Response to Clarke, by Jacqueline Simpson, vol. 114/1, 2003
Rumours of Angels: A Response to Simpson, by David Clarke, vol. 115/1, 2004
‘Le Chant des Partisans’: Functions of a Wartime Song, by Richard Raskin, vol. 102/1, 1991
‘Make Hell While the Sun Shines’: Proverbial Rhetoric in Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, by Wolfgang Mieder, vol. 106/1-2 1995
The Founding of English Ritual Dance Studies before the First World War: Human Sacrifice in India…and in Oxfordshire, by Stephen Corrsin, vol. 115/3, 2004
‘Spectral, Dancing Hosts of War’: German-language Research on Sword Dancing before World War I, by Stephen Corrsin, vol. 119/3, 2008
‘One Single Dance Form like the Sword Dance can Open Up a Whole Lost World’: The Vienna Ritualists and the Study of Sword Dancing and Secret Men’s Unions between the Two World Wars, by Stephen Corrsin, vol. 121/2, 2010
The Attitude to War in ‘The Epic of Sasoun’, by Edward Gulbenkian, vol. 95/1, 1984
The Female Soldier in Street Literature and Oral Culture in the German-Speaking Lands between 1600 and 1950: A Marker of Changing Gender Relationships? By Alice Gleave, vol. 122/2, 2011