Folklore, fantasy and indigenous fantasy

Abstract

In Chapter 4 we argued that in the inter-war period myth, folk tale and fairy tale were mostly kept separate from fantasy: even in Patricia Lynch's The Turf-Cutter's Donkey (1934) which used all three, the result was three distinct sections with their own flavours. In the post-war period fantasy writers began to plunder the legendary archaeology of Britain. A new paganism, which we can see threaded through the fantasy writing of the 1970s, focused on a range of things: although Celtic lore was to recede into the background (taken up far more by US and Canadian writers who often continued to struggle with what Baum believed was a lack of indigenous material), English traditions were brought into focus. Englishness became, for the first time, a distinct trope in UK fantasy, and at the same time indigenous traditions were brought into the new fantasy of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Peter Bramwell has observed that despite the retellings from Lancelyn Green and others, the figure of Pan, and the classical tradition more generally, declined in children's literature in the post-war period. Pan seems to have retained only a small place in children's fiction up to the 1970s, reduced to appearing as a magical statue in Panchit's Secret by Vivienne Wayman (1975). Only later, as we shall see, did a revived interest in classicism reposition Pan in his homeland. In the place of Pan arose an animism with its roots in a variety of factors, among them the emphasis on nature and the natural in the youth movements of Scouts and Guides, the rise of rambling as a leisure activity in Britain, and the deepening historical sensibility towards and encouragement of Englishness that we see in children's historical novels. Rosemary Sutcliff, one of the best children's historical writers of the period, allows both Tansy of the non-fantastical The Armourer's House (1951) and Jenny of The Roundabout Horse (1986) to be influenced by the magic of Midsummer's Eve. In The Queen Elizabeth Story (1952) Perdita is able to see the Pharisees because she was born on Midsummer's Eve.