New Beginnings: Towards a National Folklore Survey

Abstract

The study of folklore in England stands at a crossroads. Is it content with its current activities and achievements, or should it make a determined effort to move forward? A subject pioneered in this country, which gave it its name and early academic reputation, seems in danger of losing momentum. Its mission lacks a common purpose, and tends to be fragmented, and the discipline as a whole has largely been ineffectual in asserting its social and cultural importance. One way to redress these shortcomings is for the leading organizations concerned to undertake a comprehensive survey of the rich variety of traditions in our present-day multicultural society. This will generate a new impetus in efforts to document these aspects of English cultural heritage.

Notes

1 The Society’s AGM Conference, ‘Folklore Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow’, was held at the University of Sheffield, 17–19 April 2015. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the conference.

2 See also Folklore Virtual Special Issue, ‘British Women Folklorists before the Second World War’ (2013): http://explore.tandfonline.com/content/ah/british-women-folklorists.

3 Most received training in the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the Institute of Dialect and Folk Life Studies at the University of Leeds, and at the Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language (later the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, or NATCECT) at the University of Sheffield.

4 Prominent among these were the British Folk Studies Forum, which grew out of a series of meetings between working folklorists beginning in 1985, and which published Forum (1986–87), Dear Mr. Thoms … (1987–94), Letters to Ambrose Merton (1995–2002), Talking Folklore (1986–90), and Reading Folklore (1987–90); the Traditional Drama Research Group (http://www.folkplay.info/TDRG.htm), which published Traditional Drama Studies (1985–90), and Roomer (1980–91); London Lore (1978–83), and Plant-lore Notes & News (1988–2007, continuing as Plant-Lore online: http://www.plant-lore.com/ [2010–]); and The Folklore Society’s Education Group, which published Lore and Learning (1993–96). Research into contemporary legend at the University of Sheffield, beginning in the early 1970s, led ultimately to the founding of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research.

5 The Universities of Leeds and Sheffield; see note 3.

6 These include those offered by the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Fantasy at the University of Chichester, in Folk and Traditional Music at the University of Newcastle, in Ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield, and in Dance at De Montfort University, Leicester.

7 In recent years the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s Education Department has developed a programme of workshops, lectures, classes, and other events on childlore, custom, belief, narrative, domestic lore, crafts, and other genres, principally through such initiatives as English Traditions in the Community. It has also taken the lead in digitizing the Society’s extensive archives through the ‘Full English’ project which, in partnership with arts and education organizations, provides access to the material (http://www.vwml.org.uk/search/search-full-english). From 2009 the Society has enjoyed the status of being an Arts Council England Regularly Funded Organisation.

8 For example, the James Madison Carpenter project based in the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen, the Village Music Project (http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/about.htm), Steve Roud’s Folk Song and Broadside Indexes housed in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (http://www.vwml.org/search/search-roud-indexes), and the Doc Rowe Archive and Collection (http://www.docrowe.org.uk/collect/index.html), among many others.

9 These include heritage interpretation; advising on national and regional cultural traditions; undertaking research and providing specialist knowledge of the subject in libraries, museums, educational institutions, community centres, and through local and regional organizations; offering information to the tourist industry, which in England is inexplicably ignorant of the wealth of traditions that are central to the tourist experience; and informing and advising the media and the advertising industry on all aspects of cultural tradition, both historical and contemporary. See also Widdowson (1990b, 213–19).

10 These include the Survey of Unlucky Plants (see Vickery 1985), the Wart-Cure Survey (Hatfield 1998), and the Survey of Festive Foods (1989–90).

11 Among these are the University of Leeds Folk Life Survey (Sanderson 1960, 1962), the Survey of English Language and Folklore at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield (Lore and Language 1, no. 1 [1969]: 1–2 and 9–10; 17, nos 1/2 [1999]: 1–4), the ongoing Survey of English Tradition at the Centre for English Traditional Heritage (trad. 1 [2010]: 1–2), and Ethnomedica: The Remembered Remedies Project (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20040722074717/kew.org/ethnomedica).

12 The recent success of citizen science initiatives suggests that a parallel ‘citizen arts’ innovative approach could provide a way forward, supported by funding agencies, philanthropists, crowdfunding, and the creation of donors’ funds such as those of the American Folklore Society (http://www.afsnet.org/donations/).

13 Three obvious examples are Towards a National Arts and Media Strategy (Webber and Challans 1992), Folk Arts: Discussion Document 35 (Rigby 1991), and the Inquiry into Folklife in Australia (Committee of Inquiry into Folklife in Australia 1987).

14 ‘The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage’ (Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage; UNESCO 2003).

15 See Traditions in Place. Making it Our Own: Intangible Cultural Heritage in Scotland. Unpublished report on an event held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, 28 February 2015 (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone/).

16 An online petition calling on the UK government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport to ratify the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage has secured some nine thousand signatures to date. This in itself is a major step forward in the campaign to lobby the relevant political and funding agencies both at national and local levels (https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/the-uk-government-ratifies-the-unesco-convention-on-intangible-cultural-heritage?time=1385121984#).

17 The Survey of Regional English (SuRE), initiated jointly by the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield in the late 1990s, aimed to use innovative techniques to investigate variation in contemporary speech in urban centres across England (Kerswill et al 1999). In 2005 the Survey received a major boost through the BBC ‘Voices’ project, which incorporated both a questionnaire and an interactive online survey. The resulting recordings are deposited in the British Library Sound Archive (http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices).

18 More recent fieldwork guides are readily available, including, for example, Goldstein (1964), Ives (1980), and Jackson (1987).

19 The survey also offers an opportunity for the English members of the Newer Researchers in Folklore group to capitalize on their energy, expertise, and innovative approaches by galvanizing support for the survey and participating fully in its planning, so as to bring it to fruition.

20 For recent practical advice on setting up and structuring such an electronic archive, see Oriol (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. D. A. Widdowson

J. D. A. Widdowson is the founder and former director of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield, and co-director of the Institute for Folklore Studies in Britain and Canada. He was editor of Lore and Language, 1964–99. He is also the founder/director of the Centre for English Traditional Heritage and editor of the e-journal Tradition Today.