GUEST POST Forgotten Victorian folklore collectors: An undiscovered treasure trove

Francis Young on the rediscovery of forgotten riches.

Collecting folklore was all the rage in Victorian England. Although there were occasional collectors of ‘popular antiquities’ in the 17th and 18th centuries (John Aubrey is perhaps the most famous example), it was not until after William Thoms coined the word ‘folklore’ in 1846 that books dedicated to folk beliefs, stories and customs became popular.

 The foundation of the Folklore Society in 1878 inaugurated the golden age of English folklore collection, which lasted up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. As the progress of technological innovation and social change intensified, so too did fascination with England’s vanishing rural lore. Folklore collection was an activist form of nostalgia which engaged the interest of everyone from learned scholars and dilettantish amateurs to hack journalists and the proprietors of local newspapers.

The Victorian folklore collectors were a strikingly diverse group, compared with authors of other kinds of literature. The Folklore Society struggled hard to turn folklore into an academic discipline, even a ‘science’, but this effort has never really succeeded.

Folklore remained (and, to a large extent, remains to this day) the domain of enthusiastic amateurs of all social classes. Some folklorists were aristocrats or members of the landed gentry, who sought to gather up the folklore of their tenants from a great height. But one of the earliest serious collectors of local folklore was the poet John Clare, who began life as a rural labourer in Northamptonshire like the people whose songs and stories he collected.

Furthermore, many of the early folklore collectors were women, since the recording of traditional lore was a form of writing considered acceptable for female authors. These folklore collectors gathered stories from other women, producing a form of literature that almost uniquely gave voices to rural working class women.

The work of many Victorian folklore collectors, especially those who were working class or female, remains obscure. Less well-off or well-connected folklorists struggled to get their writing into print, or were only published in local newspapers. Others fell victim to publishers who did not understand how to market or promote books about folklore, or to journalistic plagiarists who appropriated the hard work of folklore collectors as their own.

The first obscure Victorian folklorist whom I had the privilege of bringing to light was Charles Dack (1847–c. 1920), a self-taught railway clerk who became volunteer curator of Peterborough Museum. Dack was able to get a few articles and short pamphlets published, but he simply did not have the financial resources to publish a larger work on the folklore of the Soke of Peterborough.

Some of Dack’s papers were later acquired by Cambridge University Library, and I relied heavily on these to produce my book Peterborough Folklore (shortlisted for the 2018 Katharine Briggs Folklore Award), which is largely a tribute to Dack’s fieldwork.

My book Suffolk Fairylore, published in 2018, similarly sought to excavate the work of some forgotten folklorists, notably the sisters Anna and Lois Fison, who were responsible for recording three folktales they heard from their old nurse in Barningham, Suffolk growing up in the 1830s: ‘Brother Mike’, ‘Cap o’Rushes’ and ‘Tom Tit Tot’.

A leading member of the Folklore Society, Edward Clodd, soon muscled in and reported ‘Tom Tit Tot’ without attribution to the Fisons; Clodd brought the tale to the attention of European folklorists, and although he later apologised to the Fison sisters, their role as the original collectors of the tales was often erased in subsequent folklore studies.

Another woman folklorist who suffered plagiarism was Margaret Helen James (1859–1938), a figure so obscure that her identity was not known until 2017. James was a cousin of the famous writer of ghost stories M.R. James. She published only one book, Bogie Tales of East Anglia (1891), a folklore collection that rapidly became very scarce but was extensively plagiarised by a journalist, Morley Adams, in 1914.

Margaret James’s Bogie Tales was the earliest book dedicated to the folklore of East Anglia, but her contribution has been entirely overlooked until now because her identity was unknown and much of the folklore she collected has been attributed to Morley Adams. I have recently edited Margaret James’s book, with a critical introduction and notes, so that it can finally be made widely available.

The 19th century’s regional folklorists were remarkable individuals – dedicated, eclectic in their interests, often eccentric and sometimes self-taught. Their writings, both published and unpublished, often remain a treasure-trove still to be uncovered.

The digitisation of local newspapers and Victorian pamphlets, making them searchable, is bringing much lost folklore recording to light, and we are currently living through a golden age of folklore research – not because there is still traditional folklore to be collected (in most cases there is not), but because folklore collected over a hundred years ago is finally emerging from the shadows.

Read more from Francis Young on his website.

Concern over Northamptonshire County Council's stewardship of the John Clare archive

There was a letter in the Guardian today from some of the literary great and good expressing concern at plans to downgrade Northampton's central library:

This library is home to many a unique resource pertaining to Northamptonshire history and culture, but we are specifically concerned about the John Clare collection – arguably the world’s greatest archive of the poet’s manuscripts, of his books, and of a wide collection of unique ephemera and publications by or about Clare. The collection is used by international scholars and artists of all kinds, and has been a hub and stimulus of activity in response to this increasingly significant poet for many decades. 

The collection at Northampton has always been maintained by expert, attentive, scholarly librarians, who do their level best with scant resources to make this publicly owned archive available to readers and researchers of all kinds. Our central concern here is that – given the size of the cuts planned, and the loss of staff and expertise delivered by all of the council’s options – there will be a permanently detrimental effect upon the care and curation of the Clare collection. 

John Clare's literary stock has been rising and rising for years. You can read all about him on the John Clare Society website.

All local authorities are facing enormous financial pressure, but it is notable that yesterday Sajid Javid announced an inquiry into the finances of the Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council, which runs the library.

Meanwhile, a police investigation of a loan made by Northampton Borough Council (also run by the Tories) to the town's football club continues.

The lesser pleasures of Tickencote

After visiting Tickencote church you naturally turn your attention to the village.

It has a water mill on the Gwash - the Tickencote community website says it closed in the mid 1930s - a former school and cottages with names that make it sound the sort of place that the people who produce chocolate boxes go for their holidays.

One of them, Flower Pot Cottage, was once the Flower Pot pub and frequented by the poet John Clare.

Six of the Best 527

Adam Ludlow analyses Labour's pensioner problem.

"In the 1930s many British aristos found themselves unable to keep their right arm vertical. Like their fellow nobs in France, Prussia and Spain, they clung to fascism as an antidote to democracy and in the hope of keeping their loot." Glen Newey puts that photo of a young Princess Elizabeth giving a Nazi salute into historical context.

Jenny Uglow goes round the Eric Ravilious exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and finds the artist modern, English and strange.

Mrs Slocombe in space? Surely nothing could go wrong. Well, to judge by Come Back Mrs Noah’s repeat appearances on ‘worst sitcom’ lists, plenty did. This late-seventies comedy was one dud note in the otherwise much-admired comedy careers of writer producers David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd." Louisa Mellor surveys 11 science fiction situation comedies you may well have forgotten.

East of Elveden visits Crowland and John Clare's Helpston.

The remains of terracing in back gardens; grassy banks that reveal the extent of an earlier, much larger stadium; a forgotten East End stadium that could accommodate 120,000... Derelict London takes us around some of the city's long lost sports grounds.

Toby Jones and a straw bear

The 19th-century poet John Clare once walked from an Epping Forest asylum to Northamptonshire without food or money.

Andrew Kötting and author Iain Sinclair have made a documentary about it, starring Toby Jones and a straw bear

East End Review tells us more:

A feverishly experimental documentary, By Our Selves sees Jones, Kötting and Sinclair ghosting through a middle-English landscape of hedgerows and wind farms, with Sinclair – dark-suited and goat-masked – reading excerpts from Clare’s journal. 

Fragments of sound from other films and recordings add to a hallucinatory atmosphere. “John Clare was a minor nature poet who went mad,” flickers throughout. 

It’s a stunning piece built on connections, coincidence and déjà vu – an introverted work, with Jones, as the poet, silent, given a voice by his real-life father’s trembling renditions. 

Sinclair, whose book details his own significant links to Clare, explains: “The interesting thing was that Toby’s father, Freddie Jones, this terrific actor, had acted John Clare on TV in 1970. Toby was four years old and his father was playing John Clare and his mother Mrs Clare, and of course he goes off into an asylum in the end and Toby was freaked out by this. 

“I think out of respect for what his father had done he wanted to take part. So the father and son are haunting each other… There were very strong connections and all these things came into play as we went along the road.”

By Our Selves is being shown at the new Picturehouse Central in London's West End on Saturday 20 June.

Iain Sinclair interviewed at the London Review Bookshop

Iain Sinclair interviewed by John Rogers at The London Review Bookshop on 23 October 2014. He discusses his life in literature, film, London, John Clare, walking in Los Angeles, and more.

Iain Sinclair on Edge of the Orison

This is a film Iain Sinclair made for Newsnight about his book Edge of the Orsion, which was based on a walk he made retracing John Clare's steps from Epping to Peterborough.

You may also enjoy The Straw Bear takes a stroll through the streets of Peterborough.

The Straw Bear takes a stroll through the streets of Peterborough

Andrew Kötting's film By Our Selves retraces John Clare's journey from Epping Forest to Northamptonshire accompanied by a straw bear.

From KickStarter:

The film will feature Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, Toby Jones and a Straw Bear. The film focuses on two figures, sometimes Andrew Kötting, sometimes Toby Jones as the middle-aged John Clare. As they channel, in their own fashion, the psychic wound exposed by Clare. John Clare is alone, between the two communities of the Epping Forest asylum and the hospital in Northamptonshire. 

Kötting is dressed as a straw bear, (an alter-ego and metaphor for otherness). At the mercy of the voices and visions and the hard realities of the road.... eating the hedgerow, sleeping on gravel, foot-foundered but determined. Framing the narrative momentum of the walk – in the acoustic footsteps of Clare – is the more complex drama of the two asylum interludes. The forest edge in High Beach, the meeting with the gypsies. The desperation of being lost, with no sense of direction, among the ancient trees. 

The actor Freddie Jones (father of Toby) plays the older Clare in his final Northamptonshire incarceration. At the point when his identity is lost. 

We think, in its apparent simplicity of means, in the bite of Clare’s language and observations of the seasons and the natural world, this is one of the great English stories.

Alan Moore on Iain Sinclair

On The Quietus, Nick Talbot interviews Alan Moore about his relationship with Iain Sinclair, their different perspectives on psychogeography and their influence each has had on the other's work:

When Iain was up visiting on the same Edge Of The Orison occasion, when we went for a nice walk around St. Andrews's mental hospital, where John Clare was confined for the last years of his life, and I was bitching and whining about everything great about Northampton had been pulled down, he said “But you've still got quite a bit left”.

Britblog Roundup 255: This week with added video

Welcome to this week's selection of the best in British blogging.

Politics

As you see, we start with something new: a video. It comes from Paul Staines' Guido Fawkes blog.
I have sometimes been puzzled by Guido's pre-eminence in British blogging - why is there such a readership for stories about Gordon Brown picking his nose? - but this film on "The Hubris of Nick Robinson" is a classy production and explains what the blog does with all those interns. Guido is promising more good things in the run up to the general election.
Writing on Liberal Democrat Voice Mark Pack looks forward to the debates between the main party leaders at that election, making 10 predictions. One of them is that "there will be a battle over worms".
The New Adventures of Juliette probably will not enjoy watching David Cameron in those debates: she objects to seeing a:

giant poster of David Cameron's weirdly smooth, wholesome, lineless, boneless-looking pinky-beige face gazing earnestly down at me from a great big fuck-off billboard".

And Gordon Brown had better not try arguing that liberal voters support his policies: Mark Reckons isn't having any of it.
Around the world
If you really can't face the prospect of those debates, you could try moving abroad.
Where to choose?
Odessablog helpfully points out that Ukraine is the 68th best place to live.
There may be a lot wrong with Spain too, but Thoughts from Galicia has discovered a journalist who believes you are not entitled to mention them unless you are Spanish yourself.
Or you could go to Africa, though Charles Crawford explains that you may find yourself officially the only gay in the continent.
Maybe you would do better in Paris, which On An Overgrown Path has visited.
Around Britain
Go Litel Blog, Go has found a poem by John Clare that is relevant to our current weather:

And in the morning, when the tempest drops,
At every cottage door mountainous heaps
Of snow lie drifted, that all entrance stops
Until the besom and the shovel gain
The path, and leave a wall on either side.

Earthpal describes a current-day struggle with the white stuff. And Musings from a Muddy Island allows us to enjoy scenes of Mersea Island in the snow.
Unmitigated England describes a visit to the landscaped gardens and follies of Stowe which may just have passed on his enthusiasm for such things to his sons.
And English Buildings explains his ambition of "slowing down the buildings".


Communication
Just because the people who run internet companies like jellybeans and snowboarding, it doesn't mean they can always be trusted to do the right thing.
The Bristol Blogger reports that earlier this week Wordpress took his blog and a couple of other blogs down without warning or explanation. It turned out that this was because each carried posts about the former vice chancellor of the University of the West of England, Sir Howard Newby.
It transpired that the pressure on Wordpress came not from shit-hot international libel lawyers but the rather less minatory figure of the director of legal services at the University of Liverpool, which is Sir Howard's new employer.
EcoLogics was another of the blogs caught up in this row and provides its own account of the affair. And Bristle’s Blog from the BunKRS asks why Liverpool is so reticent about Sir Howard's appointment.
Communication takes many forms. Geoff Jones, for instance, is having trouble unlocking his iPhone.
And The Misssy M Misssives celebrates the demise of thank you letters. Me, though I was never that good at them, I cannot note the passing of old-fashioned civility without a little sadness. Besides, the more is see "the 1950s" used as shorthand for all that the writer things is wrong with Britain, the more I want to defend that much traduced decade.
My advice is to search out the Molesworth Self Adjusting Thank You Letter.
The blog 1930 to 1960, which is probably rather keener on the fifties, has found a precursor to the popular modern children's novel Goodnight Mr Tom that was published in 1943.
Next week
The Roundup will be found on The Wardman Wire.
Please send your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com as usual.

A photograph of John Clare

John Clare, the great nature poet, was born in 1793. Perhaps it should not be so surprising that a photograph of him exists, but it still seems strange.

Anyway, that photograph was recently sold for £3600 - thanks to dumbfoundry for the lead.

While we are discussing John Clare...

I am!

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

John Clare