Rationalized Motifs in Urban Legends

Abstract

ALTHOUGH Katharine Briggs worked mainly on the folklore of past generations, she noted that 'Modern Legends, like The Stolen Corpse, are beginning to qualify as folktales, and she included a few at the end of her monumental Dictionary ofBritish Folk-Tales. Here I would like to examine an example of this genre which I believe to be a clever transformation of an old, rural, supernatural motif into modern, urban, rationalized form. It is a story told to me in Worthing, Sussex, in January 1974 by a friend, Miss L.J., then aged about 62; she had heard it from an elderly neighbour, Mr. R.P., who in turn had been told it by his brother L.P., who lived in London. The events were alleged to have happened in London to a woman personally known to L.P. Since my friend Miss L.J. began talking of the affair in a normal social conversation, it was not possible for me to record her words at the time, but I wrote them down as soon as we had parted:-