Historical Traditions in English Folk-Tales

Abstract

memories of the Machinery Riots in the Fen Country or in Yorkshire. These are often of special interest to the students of social history, because they give life and detail to events that would otherwise only be found in legal documents. Behind all these lie the traditions that may once have celebrated historical characters but which have passed into pure legend, like the tales of King Arthur and of Robin Hood. The third type of tales are those that purport to be told of an actual occurrence, but which crop up all over the place, though they are generally attached to a particular locality and family in each version of the story. Homely and comparatively modern as most of them are, they present us with the problem of the diffusion and origin of tales in a neat and compact form. In lonely places, where people have long been dependent on singing and story-telling for entertainment, the historical memory sometimes reaches back for many centuries. In Celtic countries, where the bardic tradition was long maintained, stories are sometimes reproduced after centuries with almost verbal accuracy, but in other parts of the country there is little protection against involuntary alterations or individual retrimmings. Excellent examples