‘Folklore’ by Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook review

Britain is witnessing a prolonged spell of folklore-related publications. They clutter bookshops with jackets boasting old-style lettering set against linocut illustrations of toads and finches. The contents range from nature and the environment to standing stones and contemporary art, but boast ‘folklore’ as a connective tissue. This publishing trend grew out of British nature writing and contemporary concerns over climate change and sustainability, but was tipped towards folklore by the groundswell of nationalist sentiment that surged following Brexit. Folklore has become a means by which people express ‘coming from somewhere’. To some, it has provided a way of talking about place and identity that feels more authentic than the strident certainties of traditional nationalism. As a result, being interested and participating in folklore has become a quiet form of nationalism.

Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook’s Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present is a product of this trend. Its big message is that folklore is not just curiosities to be dug out of the past, but lives among us in both new and familiar forms. This is a good message, and I am pleased to see it, though not surprised: while Davies is a historian and Houlbrook an archaeologist, both have served time with the Folklore Society, where Davies is a former president and Houlbrook edits its justly cherished newsletter, FLS News, which has collected curious snippets of folklore, past and present, for many years. Both teach on the only folklore MA offered in England, at the University of Hertfordshire.

If the phrase ‘contemporary folklore’ seems like an oxymoron, it is likely because you are an inheritor of the ideas of Victorian anthropologists and folklorists, who are largely responsible for locating the source of folklore in the deep past. There’s a certain irony here. When William Thoms coined the word folklore in 1846 he did so from the centre of modernity: London, at that time the largest city the world had ever seen at the centre of what would become the largest empire the world has (yet) endured. Folklore, as theorised by 19th-century writers such Edward Burnett Tylor, Sir James Frazer, and Andrew Lang, was a byproduct of progress, the corollary to expansion. At best it was the raw matter out of which nations cohered, but mostly it was lost, witless, and out-of-time, something to be hunted by collectors. In Britain folklore was thought to have survived despite modernity, in forgotten places in the countryside, ancient, weird, and most-likely daubed in pagan belief. Cecil Sharp made something of these scraps, popularising Morris dancing with the (mostly) middle classes, who enthusiastically participated in folk movements while worrying about authenticity and correct form.

Folklorists are often divided into those who are more interested in the ‘folk’ (the people and processes that perform ‘folklore’) and those that amass the ‘lore’. This is a book about the latter, the ‘stuff’ of folklore: its texts and their histories and contexts. A definition of folklore is offered: ‘the generation, transmission, and enaction of traditions as a creative practice, communicated through oral, literary, visual and digital means’. The chapters are organised around practices and genres, beginning in the past and moving into the present: an exploration of ritual in the landscape begins with the palaeolithic etchings in the Cresswell Caves and ends with murals in support of Palestine. Along the way we have discussed healing places, 20th-century wishing wells, and the marmalade sandwiches left at public memorials for Elizabeth II.

This historical approach has two consequences. Firstly, by cataloguing the richness of British folklore it tends to elevate the strange over the banal. Not many will be aware of the mid-1950s enthusiasm for asbestos rope as a cure for lumbago, for example. This has the effect of neglecting the stuff of daily life. The second consequence is that it grounds folklore genres in the past. This is important, but could have been achieved by writing from the present back. In the discussion on folk medicine, this would have allowed the authors to dig more effectively into antivax lore and other contemporary medical beliefs.

Nevertheless, the historical approach provides the authors much opportunity to foreground change, especially when discussing the present. The inclusion of a survey of digital folklore is to be commended, and yet the digital infuses all contemporary folklore, from children’s play routines on the online game Roblox to the ubiquitous presence of smartphones recording participation in festivals. The narrative approach also privileges the people of the past, and downplays the dynamism of the multicultural present (though I am sure the authors would point out that much of the research on the latter has yet to be done).

Critiquing the book’s organisation and emphasis might be deemed ungenerous, as, on the whole, it is a remarkable achievement of concision which marshals an impressive amount of material. Often, the facts are left to speak for themselves. A measured scholarly tone is taken throughout, which lets in little personal experience. I particularly enjoyed those occasions where my expectations were subverted. The folklore of mushrooms, for example, gives the authors opportunity to talk about folk methods of detecting toxicity (with a silver spoon) and evolves into an exploration of British culinary ‘aversion to anything other than the field mushroom’. The record suggests that the British were never expert foragers.

Such moments encourage reflection on the contemporary interests that are projected onto the shelves of bookshops, where a title on mushroom foraging might sit next to this very compendium of folklore. Such books allow us to feel secure and at home in a world that continues to change with alarming volatility. In a competitive field, this is certainly the best introduction to contemporary British folklore.

• Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present 
  Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook
  Manchester University Press, 336pp, £20
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Matthew Cheeseman is Professor of Writing and Folklore at the University of Derby.