The Folklore Society

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Folklore query? Ask the folklorists.

Register with the Yahoo! Talking Folklore group set up by Steve Roud.

Or send your enquiry to The Folklore Society using our Contact Form.

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

A joint publication of the University of Tartu, the Estonian National Museum and the Estonian Literary Museum, now available free online: www.jef.ee.

JStor Folklore Back Numbers since 1878

If you are a member of The Folklore Society and would like to set up your free account and password for JStor's online collection of back numbers of Folklore, Folk-Lore Record and Folk-Lore Journal, contact enquiries@folklore-society.com.

If you already have a password you can access JStor here.

Brian McConnell Book Award

Book Prize of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research

For more information, visit www.contemporarylegend.org
or contact ehenken@uga.edu

Gwyn Jones Fellowships at the Museum of English Rural Life

More details.

Caucasus Folklore Scholarship

The Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield invites applications for a fully-funded PhD scholarship dedicated to the folklore and literature of the Caucasus region.

More information.

Coming up

SIEF 2013: 11th SIEF International Congress
Tartu, Estonia, 30 June - 4 July, 2013
For more information, click here:
www.siefhome.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=201&Itemid=87

Calls for Papers

Laography and Lexicography, or Finding Folklore in Dictionaries
A panel organised by our very own Jonathan Roper at the SIEF conference, University of Tartu, Estonia, July 2013
Click here for more details www.nomadit.co.uk/sief/sief2013/panels.php5?PanelID=1807

Death in modern Scotland, 1855-1955: beliefs, attitudes and practices
Friday 1 February 2013 - Saturday 3 February, 2013
New College, University of Edinburgh
More information: peter.c.jupp@ed.ac.uk

The English Folk Dance & Song Society (EFDSS)

EFDSS has become one of Arts Council England's Regularly Funded Organisations to receive £400,000 of funding over two years. The funding will enable EFDSS to become a national development agency for folk music and set up a number of exciting new initiatives that will benefit the folk sector.

For further information, please contact EFDSS Marketing Director, Sophia Linehan, at sophia@efdss.org.

Archive folk music material

Now available online, from The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at The English Folk Dance and Song Society:

• Baring-Gould manuscripts
• Roud Indexes
• Cecil Sharp Diaries transcribed

Beasts in Legend and Tradition

7th and 8th September 2013 at Paignton Zoo, Devon

This two-day conference on Beasts in Legend and Tradition will be held on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September 2013 as the eighth Legendary Weekend of the Folklore Society at Paignton Zoo. We’d like to hear from anyone who can contribute to the theme of animals in culture – folklorists, zoologists, storytellers, farmers, social historians, werewolves and anthropologists. Presentations, which should be 20 minutes long, can take the form of talks, performances, or DVD. The main event will take place on Saturday with additional material on Sunday.

If you would like to attend or to present a paper or performance, please contact:

Jeremy Harte
Bourne Hall
Spring Street
Ewell
Surrey KT17 1UF
020 8394 1734
JHarte@epsom-ewell.gov.uk

Download flier

Alliterativa Causa - 18-19 January 2013, at The Warburg Institute, London

A conference organized by the Folklore Society, the University of Tartu and the Warburg Institute. Click here for more information and registration form.

The Katharine Briggs Award 2012

Congratulations to David Hopkin, winner of The Katharine Briggs Award 2012 for his book Voices of the People in Nineteenth Century France, published by Cambridge University Press.

Congratulations also to the joint runners-up: Sara Hanant, Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey through the English Ritual Year (Merrell); and R. Andrew Chesnut, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press).

For the Judges' Report on the Short List click here.

Estella Canziani Bursary for Post-graduate Research 2012

We are delighted to announce that we awarded two Canziani post-graduate research bursaries in June this year to:
Yana Yankova: “Unmasking the Kukeri Ritual: Exploring the Current State & Significance of the Masquerade Folklore Tradition in Postsocialist Bulgaria”, and
Ceri Houlbrook: “Coining the Coin-Tree: Contextualising a Contemporary Ritual Practice in the British Isles”

"Urban Folklore": The Folklore Society's Annual General Meeting and Conference 2013

19-21 April 2013, at Cardiff University

• Call for papers
• List of Cardiff hotels

FLS Library Update: New Electronic Finding Aid

Click here for more information

New Book

Studies in English and Scandinavian Folklore: Selected Articles from Folklore presented to the author for her 80th Birthday

by Jacqueline Simpson
Edited by Patricia Lysaght and James Grayson
Limited edition, London: The Folklore Society, April 2012
ISBN 978-0-9572266-0-9
xiv + 290 pages. Paperback
Price: £25.00 plus postage and packing.

To order a copy, contact: enquiries@folklore-society.com

More information

Virtual Special Issue 3: Folklore Studies and Arthurian Tradition

www.tandf.co.uk/journals/explore/rfol-arthurian-tradition.pdf

Click here for Virtual Special Issues 1 and 2

Recent Events

The Katharine Briggs Lecture and Book Award 2012

Wednesday 7 November, 6.30 p.m., at The Warburg Institute, London WC1

This year's lecturer is Dr David Atkinson: "The Ballad and its Paradoxes"

The lecture is free and open to all but please let us know you're coming by email to enquiries@folklore-society.com or by phone to 00 44 (0)207 862 8564. After the lecture, there will be a wine reception and buffet supper during we will announce the winner of this year's Katharine Briggs Award and all the books entered for the competition will be on display.

Download poster

Shortlist

• Dave Arthur, Bert: The Life and Times of A.L. Lloyd (Pluto)
• Regina Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem, eds, A Companion to Folklore (Wiley-Blackwell)
• R. Andrew Chesnut, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (Oxford University Press)
• Sara Hannant, Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey through the English Ritual Year (Merrell)
• David Hopkin, Voices of the People in Nineteenth Century France (Cambridge University Press)
• Craig Koslofsky, Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press)
• Katherine Luongo, Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900-1950 (Cambridge University Press)
• Emily Lyle, ed., Galoshins Remembered: ‘A Penny Was a Lot in These Days' (National Museums of Scotland)
• Mark Stoyle, The Black Legend of Prince Rupert's Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War (University of Exeter Press)
• Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and The Arabian Nights (Chatto & Windus)

"Popular Antiquities 2": Folklore & Archaeology Conference at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London
13th-14th October 2012

Jointly hosted by The Folklore Society.

Following the great success of the first "Popular Antiquities" conference in October 2011, this second multidisciplinary conference will continue to present and discuss the relationship between folklore and archaeology, their histories, materials, aims, methods and reception. Whilst the two subjects were, at one time, one and the same thing, the past two centuries have seen increased separation, and indeed hostility, between them. Through this conference, we hope to come closer to reconciling and promoting collaboration between the two disciplines.

The conference will also mark the celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Institute of Archaeology and the centenary of The Folklore Society Library's presence at University College London Library. For more details, contact t.paphitis@ucl.ac.uk, martindavidlocker@hotmail.com or enquiries@folklore-society.com, or telephone 0207 862 8564.

There will also be an exhibition of popular antiquities for the duration of the conference.

• Registration form (pdf)
• Provisional programme (pdf)
• Hotel list (pdf)
• Download flyer (pdf)

Underground in Legend and Tradition: The Seventh Folklore Society Legendary Weekend
1-2 September 2012 at Matlock Bath Pavilion, Derbyshire, UK.

• Download flyer (pdf)
• Programme (pdf)
• Accommodation (pdf)

Professor Jack Zipes: "The Americanization of the Grimms' Fairy Tales"
Weds 12 September 2012, 5.00 p.m. at The Warburg Institute, University of London.



To book, contact enquiries@folklore-society.com

"Folklore and Fantasy" Conference
Friday 13th to Sunday 15th April 2012.

A joint conference of The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairytales and Fantasy, at the University of Chichester. Together with The Folklore Society Annual General Meeting 2012 on the Friday afternoon.

• Programme
• Abstracts
• Photos from the Folklore and Fantasy conference
• Hear Emily and the Hares and the South Downs Singers performing a song at the conference (MP3) - recording by Marc Armitage

McDowall Prize 2011

Congratulations to Janet Dowling, winner of the McDowall Prize 2011, for her essay "Naming the Green Man."

More information about the McDowall Prize.

New Book: Alliteration In Culture

Papers from The Folklore Society's Alliteration conference of 2007
www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=361599

The Katharine Briggs Lecture 2012

Wednesday 7 November 2012 at The Warburg Institute. This year's speaker will be Dr David Atkinson. The title of the lecture is "The Ballad and its Paradoxes."

Folklore Society Library News

2011 was a very busy year for the FLS Library and Archives. We are very grateful to all the volunteers, part-timers and temporary staff who helped out, listed here in order of appearance: Sietske Fransen, Peter Kiernan, Katie Reid, Cassie Gonzales, Cathy Hull, Tom Goodman, Angharad Gwylim, Kieran Turner, Tabitha Cadbury, Jeremy Harte, Matteo Favaretto, Nick Wall, Mary-Elizabeth Blume, Morwenna Roche, Paul Cowdell. And if I've forgotten anyone, grovelling apologies. With their help, we managed to get our Archives and mss collections, 1250 Rare Books, 300 folios, and extensive Pamphlet collections reboxed, wrapped, tied, labeled and listed ahead of the deadline for University College London Library Special Collections removal to temporary (2 year) quarters at The National Archives at Kew. For information about ordering these items and reserving a seat in UCL's reading room at Kew, contact enquiries@folklore-society.com.

Most our FLS Library books and periodicals, around 12,000 volumes, are held in a different store of UCL Library and many of these can be borrowed by FLS members. Contact enquiries@folklore-society.com or phone 0207 862 8564 for information on borrowing. We also hold around 1000 reference works at our FLS Office at The Warburg Institute; visitors can come and read them during FLS office hours, Monday to Friday, 2-6 (but please make an appointment beforehand).

The Katharine Briggs Book Award 2011

The Katharine Briggs Book Award 2011:

Folk Tales, Tall Tales, Trickster Tales, and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey: Recorded and Annotated by Herbert Halpert between 1936 and 1951, by the late Herbert Halpert and J.D.A Widdowson, published by The Edwin Mellen Press.

The prize was awarded to Professor Widdowson and Dr William Marcy IV of The Edwin Mellen Press at a reception on Wednesday 9 November at The Warburg Institute following a well attended and very enjoyable lecture by Michael Rosen.

• First runner-up: Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis, The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter (Oxford University Press)
• Second runner-up: Jay M. Smith, Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast (Harvard University Press)

The Folklore Society congratulates the winners and extends warm thanks to all the authors and publishers who entered their books for the award.

Click here for the short listed titles and the judges' comments on them

McDowall Prize

Entries for the McDowall Prize 2012 are invited: click here for more details.

Memorial Offerings

Floral Tributes to Steve Jobs outside the Apple store in Bath, 6 October 2011. Photo Leslie Currie.

Postcard of George Washington, from The Folklore Society Archives & Collections

Read Juliette Wood's article A Postcard to Commemorate George Washington's Birthday (pdf).

Folklore and Legends of Lincolnshire

By Mabel Peacock and Wilhelmine Fowler, Edited by Gillian Bennett [2010], available on CD, price £5.00 UK pounds. To place an order, email us using the contact form here.

Thomas Fairman Ordish

Thanks to the efforts of Andrew Bennett and his team of eager volunteers, The Folklore Society's collection of Ordish papers has now been transcribed. Although it is still very much work in progress, we now have available a DVD of boxes 1-5, price £10.00 UK pounds. To place an order, email us using the contact form here.

Podcast Series Exclusive

Listen to Part One of “Sir Terry Pratchett in Conversation with Dr Jacqueline Simpson”

A Tribute to William John Thoms (1803-1885), Creator of Folklore

5 September 2010, at the close of our fifth annual Legendary Weekend "Death in Legend and Tradition," at Brompton Cemetery, London, Dr Roper gave a short eulogy and laid a wreath on behalf of The Folklore Society on the grave of William J. Thoms, who first coined the term "folk-lore" in 1846.

Read Jonathan Roper's article Folklore vol. 118, Thoms and the Unachieved "Folk-Lore of England"

Click on images to enlarge

Congratulations to Professor Jacqueline Simpson, former editor of our journal Folklore and current editor of our newslettter FLS news, on her appointment as Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester's Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy

Seasonal events filmed by Doc Rowe

Britannica
Join in the discussion about the film

Read Jacqueline Simpson's piece on the Tarasque

Read or download the article (pdf)
Click on the images to enlarge.

Valentine, from the Folklore Society Archives

Read about Valentines here

Sign up to: H-Folk: H-Net Network on Folklore

www.h-net.org/~folk
A project organised by The American Folklore Society in partnership with The Folklore Society and other organisations

Read more about it here

Dr Jacqueline Simpson, former President of The Folklore Society, in the persona of Madame Jezebel de Bellegrue, Head of the Guild of Seamstresses, with Terry Pratchett at the Discworld Convention, August 2008.

Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson are joint authors of The Folklore of Discworld, which was published by Doubleday in September 2008.

Read more about this book.

The Folklore Society Post-Graduate Research Bursary

Post-Graduate Bursary for Research. See the Post-Graduate Bursary page for more details.

"The Pearly Festival" by Estella Canziani (mid-1930s).

Read Juliette Wood's article on Estella Canziani