“The Rules of Folklore” in the Ghost Stories of M.R. James

Abstract

When Dr Montague Rhodes James of King's College, Cambridge, published in 1904 first volume of elegant but alarming tales with which his name is now always associated, he called it Ghost Stories of an Antiquary; in 1911 he followed it with More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. word antiquary already had an old-fashioned charm about it, and was appropriate for a scholar whose work revolved round medieval manuscripts, biblical Apocrypha, library catalogues, church iconography and like.(1) But he was something of a folklorist too (more so than his self-deprecating remarks on topic imply), with a particular interest in development and persistence of local legends and historical memories, a good knowledge of traditional beliefs, and an interest in oral narration. This does not mean, however, that he was in sympathy with dominant group among folklorists of his time, comparative anthropologists and mythologists, with their sweeping theories and universalist explanations. They are lampooned in person of sinister Mr Karswell in Casting Runes, who is author of a History of Witchcraft and a paper on The Truth of Alchemy about whom one of other characters in story comments: There was nothing that man didn't swallow: mixing up classical myths, and stories out of Golden Legend with reports of savage customs today - all very proper, no doubt, if you know how to use them, but he didn't; he seemed to put Golden Legend and Golden Bough exactly on a par, and to believe both: a pitiable exhibition, in short (James 1970, 258-9). That is fiction, written in 1911; in 1917 James raised same issues in all seriousness against no less a scholar than Jane Harrison, when she wrote a paper linking dance of Salome and beheading of John Baptist to dance of Agave with head of Pentheus in Bacchae as the dance of daimon of New Year with head of Old Year, past and slain. After countering Harrison's arguments, James commented: I have often viewed with very grave suspicion way in which comparative mythologists treat their evidence ... I regret to see that a researcher of her experience can allow herself to make public crude and inconsequential speculations of this kind, which go far to justify those who deny to Comparative Mythology name and dignity of a science. I believe it to be a science, but only in making. I also believe that one of worst services that anyone responsible for direction of young students can do them is to encourage them to make it subject of dissertations, or to propound any theory concerning it. Loose thinking, exaggeration of resemblances, ignoring of differences, and downright falsification of evidence, are only a few of evils which a premature handling of it fosters in its votaries (James 1917; cf. Pfaff 1980, 255-6). These are stern criticisms, which went against intellectual fashions of day but which we can now see were largely justified. If that was the science of folklore, then James certainly had no wish to call himself a folklorist. At same time, he knew that a practical knowledge of folklore was useful when reading old texts. He was quite willing to explain curious way that in Scandinavia and Germany feast-day of St Stephen was linked to horse-fights and racing as reminiscent of cult of Frey (Pfaff 1980, 133). When he edited Walter Map's De Nugis Curialum in 1914 he regretted his lack of expertise on romance and folk-lore which prevented him from offering an explanatory commentary, while for his translation of same work in 1923 he enlisted help of folklorist E.S. Hartland as editor and annotator. In 1922 he published some fascinating accounts of ghostly encounters which he had discovered as addenda (in Latin) in a medieval manuscript from Byland Abbey in Yorkshire, using comparisons with nineteenth-century Danish beliefs to explain certain obscure points (James 1922). …