British Folk Research Articles

In search of common ground: landscape and place-identity in contemporary British folk

ABSTRACT This article identifies ‘place’ as a core theme in contemporary folk, one that affords a means of exploring new forms of post-national identity in Britain. While folk has engaged with questions of national identity, articulating multiculturalist positions, much recent work focuses on individual attachments to landscapes understood as both repositories of highly personal meaning and sites of universal experience. Through a discourse analysis of the popular podcast Folk on Foot (a key space for the development of this emerging discursive strand), I argue that the diminished emphasis on questions of Englishness or Britishness does not indicate a retreat from questions of cultural identity as such. Rather, the programme seeks to sketch out a post-national understanding of belonging in the landscape, one that de-emphasises cultural and ethnic differences within contemporary Britain, and focusses instead on common experiences of attachment to place and landscape that are thought to transcend notions of collective identity as bounded by national borders.

«Сказочные» карикатуры как инструмент дискредитации в британском политическом дискурсе (на примере The Guardian)

The article considers the implementation of the discrediting strategy in the British political discourse of 2021—2023. The material of the study was political cartoons published in the Guardian, which contain iconic and verbal allusions to the plots of British folk and author's fairy tales. A fairy tale is considered as a precedent phenomenon presented with varying degrees of detail: at the level of a precedent name, a precedent situation, a precedent chronotope, a precedent plot, a precedent text. The interaction of iconic and verbal components is considered. It is shown that fairy-tale allusions turn out to be an effective tool for discrediting the portrayed politicians and the transformations they carry out, since they allow the addressee to build a dynamic image of a “man-in-situation” and predict the development of the situation. Precedent situations, in turn, make it possible to endow a character with a certain set of negative personal characteristics. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of readers' comments, on the basis of which it is possible to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of the impact of the cartoon.

Stephen Sedley and Martin Carthy, Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment.

Stephen Sedley and Martin Carthy, Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment. London: Reaktion Books / English Folk Dance and Song Society, 2021. 280 pp. ISBN 978-1789145038 (hbk). £14.99.

Magic Folk Tales in Intersemiotic Translation

The present paper examines intersemiotic translation of magic folk tales. Research objective is to show the structural identity of the surface structure which can be described as a sequence of plot elements (“functions”) of fairy-tale characters; in semiotic terms it is explained by the existence of a universal matrix defining the law of genre. The authors go on to the cognitive-culturological aspect of fairy tales in terms of N. Chomsky. This research paper has clearly shown that “functions” of the surface structures correspond to plans, scenarios and frames of the deep structures, which differ in British and Russian magic fairy folk tales (wonder folk tales). Numbers and proper names are the main permanent elements of fairy tale narrative: on the level of the surface structures they connect the universal matrix of a fairy tale discourse organizing space and rhythm and at the level of the deep structures - they help to understand the main features of the national character. The study is based on 13 fairy-tale film corpus, under the common theme “Beauty and the Beast”, film adaptations of the fairy tales “La Belle et la Bête” by J.-M. Leprens de Beaumont (1757) and “The Scarlet Flower” by S.T. Aksakov (1858). Hence, the analysis of the latter based on the works of R. Jacobson and W. Eco and understood by the authors as a kind of intersemiotic translation / interpretation that, on the one hand, proves universality of the proposed algorithm for studying fairy discourse in synchrony and diachrony. On the other hand, it plays the most important role in intersemiotic translation of diachronic aspect because it deals with changing the “integral model of reality”, which is reflected, in particular, in changing the on-screen presentation / interpretation of certain aspects of the fairy-tale narrative. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the conclusions can be used to study plurality of film adaptation as a form of intersemiotic translation.

Особенности формирования ономастикона британской народной сказки

Особенности формирования ономастикона британской народной сказки

Comparison of Love Metaphors Between British Folk Songs and Yao’s Folk Songs

British Folk Songs and Yao’s Folk Songs are the art crystallizations of oral literature, which belong to the model of integrating personal creation with collective creation, reflecting the inner emotional activities and the simple way to remember things of the early laboring people. Their significant characteristics are non-individualization, non-subjectivity and non self consciousness. Phenomena of animals, plants, colors, seasons, astronomical appearances applied to love metaphors exist in the both kinds of folk songs. Findings by comparison indicate that they each have their own preferences in words and meanings applied to love metaphors because of the geospatial differences, manifesting their similarity, coincidence, gaining by contrast and unique style, which provides a perspective reference for us to understand the similarities and differences between the two folk literatures.

Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s by Ronald D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson (review)

TRANSATLANTIC FOLKRoots of the Revival: American British Folk Music in the 1950s. By Ronald D. Cohen Rachel Clare Donaldson. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. [182 p. ISBN 9780252038518 (hardcover), $85; ISBN 9780252080128 (paperback), $25; ISBN 9780252096426 (e-book), various.] Facsimiles, bibliographic references, index.Folk song enthusiasts opening their copies of Carl Sandburg's New American Songbag would have found the following endorsement inside:American Music lovers owe Carl Sand - burg a great debt for the ceaseless research which has rediscovered so much authentic American for their enjoyment. This here Songbag is just loaded with old goodies. (Carl Sandburg, New American Songbag [New York: Broadcast Music, 1950], frontispiece, emphasis mine)The same endorsement could easily be made of Ronald D. Cohen Rachel Clare Donaldson's Roots of the Revival. Part reference work, part conceptual study, the authors have drawn together a wealth of primary secondary literature to trace the development of pre-1960s on both sides of the Atlantic. They identify the 1950s as a period that has been both overlooked oversimplified. Although suburban living, emerging consumerism, rising anticommunist fervor are generally thought to have restricted the immediate postwar scene, Cohen Donaldson uncover a vibrant world of performance, criticism, study that challenges our core perceptions of what folk music could be. The authors cast their nets wide, examining not just institutionalized song research published criticism, but also the incursion of into the popular mainstream via skiffle, calypso, the Kingston Trio. Embracing music's popular manifestations is both significant necessary. After all, Sand - burg's Songbag was endorsed not by a dyedin- the-wool folkie like Alan Lomax or Pete Seeger, but by Bing Crosby.As Roots of the Revival proceeds chronologically, with similar themes figures appearing across multiple chapters, this review will draw these together rather than accounting for each chapter in turn. Cohen Donaldson examine how growing anticommunist fervor was set to impact left-leaning activities developed in the 1940s. Importantly, musicians promoters came under scrutiny not for explicit acts of espionage or verbal criticism, but rather for a broader range of activities insinuated to be subversive (pp. 26-27). Themes of peace, subversive humor, or an international outlook-the latter especially common in left-wing circles-could attract suspicion. Even the Weavers' concert performances of Rock Island Line were heard to have a red taint (p. 36).Cohen Donaldson caution against overstating the restrictive effects of anticommunist fervor, however. While activities that expressly promoted the Communist Party could quickly become off-limits (p. 35), others that were more multivalent were able to continue. The authors' awareness of this allows them to consider the strategies employed to defuse political pressures, which is a welcome contribution to our understanding of musicians' activities in this period. Some, such as the Weavers Josh White, eschewed overtly political engagements asserted that their was politically benign (p. 37). Seeger others turned McCarthyism's overbearing patriotism on its head, citing their First Amendment rights to avoid incriminating themselves or their associates. have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, Seeger testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color . . . or situation in life (p. 79).At the same time, Cohen Donaldson argue that we should be wary of interpreting musicians' deferment to populism as a compromise. After all, many aspects of the Weavers's success arrived via decidedly populist means. …

'British Folk Art: The house that Jack built' by Tate Britain

'British Folk Art: The house that Jack built' by Tate Britain

The James Madison Carpenter Collection of Traditional Song and Drama

James Madison Carpenter (1888-1983) was until recently a relatively unknown figure in the history of Anglo-American folksong and British folk play scholarship (Jabbour 1998; Bishop 1998). Born and bred in Mississippi, he was university-educated and worked as a minister and teacher prior to entering Harvard in 1920 to do a Ph.D. in English. Under the supervision of George Lyman Kittredge, he wrote a thesis on “Forecastle Songs and Chanties,” based on fieldwork with retired seamen in the United States and in ports that he visited in the summer of 1928 on a Dexter Oral Tradition, 28/2 (2013):307-316

Long Lankin (review)

Reviewed by: Long Lankin Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough. Any storyteller knows that folklore is as rich with terrifying villains and creepy bad guys as it is with clever heroes and happy endings. Long Lankin, the titular baddie of a centuries-old British folk ballad, is one such monster, but while his tale is tellably rife with murder, witchcraft, and revenge, the story has been previously untapped as a source for novelistic adaptations. That changes here, as Barraclough pits this nightmarish creature against two resourceful but vulnerable little girls to create a stunningly atmospheric and genuinely horrifying story. It's 1959, and sisters Cora and Mimi have been shipped off to an old family estate in the English countryside to stay under the care of a distant relative. About as welcoming as the gloomy, dilapidated rooms of Guerdon Hall itself, Aunt Ida is ready to return the girls to London almost as soon as they appear on her doorstep, but with the sisters' mother institutionalized and their father incommunicado, the old woman is stuck with the girls for the time being. After making the acquaintance of a village boy, Cora begins to suspect that her aunt's anxious demeanor has to do with an ancient legend regarding the Hall's history, and an encounter with a ghostly woman and the grisly spirits of dozens of murdered children convinces Cora that she needs to get herself and Mimi out of the small town before the sisters meet a similar end. Escape quickly becomes a non-option, however, and Cora is forced to investigate the past of her extended family and find a way to defeat a centuries-old evil. Barraclough begins her adaption of the ballad with a splendidly developed setting; Guerdon Hall is entirely believable as a place where folklore would come to life. The stuffy, shadowy halls of the crumbling estate are vividly portrayed in cinematic prose, and the house soon becomes nearly suffocating with its menace. The surrounding town carries an air of desperation about it, as the residents attempt to forge their way into the twentieth century even as they are haunted by the unpleasant details of their village's past. The oppressive summer heat plays a part as well, creating a feeling of strained stillness, an eerie peace that is abruptly shattered with the arrival of Cora and her sister. The narration alternates between Cora, the village boy Roger, and Aunt Ida, a device that serves to echo the omnipresent gloom of the setting with Ida's fraught voice while conveying a sense of vulnerability and innocence through the children's perspective. Their everyday doings of dares and mischief seem to exist in a safe cocoon, escaping the sinister force that otherwise surrounds the kids, and the tension amps up considerably as the creepier elements come out to play. [End Page 3] Before Long Lankin even make his appearance, Cora must contend with the aforementioned murdered young ones, a ghost with a cautionary tale, a few demented townspeople, and adults who remain mysteriously mum on the town's history of missing children. The presence of Long Lankin is at first only made evident by mysterious scratching sounds, a rotten smell near an old graveyard, and whispered rumors, but Barraclough fulfills on the book's promise of true horror, giving readers a spectacular scene in which the unfathomably evil villain appears sitting upon a throne of bones and brandishing sharp teeth and an appetite for young flesh. That image will sear itself into readers' memories, and it's not the only vivid horror the book offers. Like all the best scary stories, this will haunt readers well after the tale has been told, leaving teens who have long thought themselves too old for the bogeyman double-checking the locks on their doors. (See p. 7 for publication information.) Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The James Madison Carpenter Collection of British Folk Plays

In this, the last of my series of papers on collectors of British folk plays, I come to a man who has a direct personal interest for me. Thomas Fairman Ordish (1855–1924) whom I spoke about in my f...

The gestural language in Francisco Goya's Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Of all the symbolic constituents in The Sleep (or Dream) of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueno de la razon produce monstruos), Francisco Goya's most famous aquatint etching from his Caprichos serie...

The Lower Heyford Folk Play: James Madison Carpenter's Use of Dialect in his Cylinder Transcriptions

James Madison Carpenter came to Britain twice, in 1928 to collect sea shanties as part of the work on his PhD at Harvard College, and again between 1929 and 1935. During this last visit, Carpenter assembled a collection that is probably the largest of British folk performance material to have been collected in the field at that time. In 1972, the Library of Congress purchased Carpenter's whole collection. Alan Jabbour of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress travelled to Booneville, Mississippi, in order to collect the material and, during the course of his visit, he interviewed Carpenter at length. From the interview we gain an insight into Carpenter's methods of collecting, which were advanced for the time.

Michael Brocken, The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ISBN 0 7546 3281 4 (hb), 0 7546 3282 2 (pb)

For those of us who have lived with and through the second British folk music revival, it seems most apt that this important chapter of our lives should merit a serious academic history. We watched and were part of a radical youth movement that grew phenomenally in the late 1950s, burgeoned in the 60s, stumbled and stagnated through the 70s, but recovered its composure to mature in the late 80s; and now, half a century on, the fruits of this movement have become an established and significant part of the nation’s soundscape, as much a part of British culture as brass bands or choral singing. Much work has been and is being done to document every twist and turn of this revival, meticulously noting the key players, the setting up of clubs and festivals, broadcasting and recording developments, and so on; and, understandably, there is a welter of data on which to draw, including key witnesses to consult. One could argue that such histories are primarily of interest to the insider. But Brocken’s study, by contrast, attempts to take the view of the outsider, analysing the political agenda of the ‘revival’s’ architects and assessing its impact in terms of cultural studies as an aspect of popular music – in itself a most laudable enterprise.

The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002 (review)

British Folk Revival, 1944-2002. By Michael Brocken. (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.) Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. [xii, 236 p. ISBN O7546-3282-2. $29.95 pbk.] Discography, bibliography, index. folk music revival following World War II has come under considerable scrutiny in the last few years. Monographs by Robert Cantwell ( When We Were Good: Folk Revival [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996]) and Ronald D. Cohen (Rainbow Quest: Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 [Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002] ) chronicle the American experience, but not until Michael Brocken's British Folk Revival, 1944-2002, has there been a similar broad view of the second British folk music revival. From the very beginning, Brocken makes his prejudices and point of view quite clear. As a youngster in the 1960s, he found himself drawn towards the music of Americans Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and the folk-rock band, the Byrds. But upon his increased involvement with the British scene of the time, he immediately found himself confronted in the 1960s British folk clubs by the dichotomy between the popularized and admittedly commercial folk style he had come to treasure, and the severe authentic approach which required that all folk music of value be strictly British, or political in nature, or from the past. This ultimately leads to Brocken's thesis, which simply stated is this: The needless polarisation that opposes the authentic to the commercial has stultified growth [in the British Folk Revival] in all but the most progressive areas of the folk commercial sector. Brocken's argument begins by discussing the early revivalists, Cecil Sharp in particular, noting that Sharp made a clear distinction between popular music and folk music while at the same time working to popularize traditional British folk music through published arrangements, or recontextualizing-suggesting that from the very beginning, the British folk music revival had perhaps done something dishonest. Brocken places Sharp's work along with efforts by Vaughan Williams, Percy Grainger, and George Butterworth in a larger nationalist context where the interest in folk music played a role in both patriotic and anti-urban movements. After World War II, the revival, still based on the conservative view of folk music as an inherited tradition, turns more political. Here, Brocken introduces us to the holy trinity of British folk music, A. L. (Bert) Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, and the American Peggy seeger. It is probably Lloyd's publication of Singing Englishman in 1944 that Brocken regards as the beginning date for the second revival. Lloyd, through his work in British folk song, became perhaps its best-known expert by the late 1940s. To Lloyd, the growth of urbanized and industrialized communities had a tangible, erosive effect upon hundreds of years of oral traditions. He deemed the collection and preservation of those traditions, viewed by him as being close to irrevocable loss, of paramount importance. Ewan MacColl, inspired by the work of the American Alan Lomax, similarly took a hard position against the popular or commercial performance of traditional folk Brocken calls MacColl the epitome of the difference between communal and consumer music. Together with his third wife, Peggy seeger, MacColl, more than any other single figure, worked to maintain a critical traditionalist approach. This is the very approach that Brocken himself experienced in the British folk clubs. MacColl's Critics Group literally set policy governing the types of songs that could be sung, and how they should properly be sung to be authentically English. Turning towards the institutions that supported the revival, Brocken introduces three key institutions to the English folk revival: the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), the Worker's Music Association (WMA), and Topic Records. EFDSS, the bastion of the traditionalists, represented a view largely inherited from the earlier revival and heavily promoted folk dance, while the WMA, affiliated with the Communist Party, took more of an interest in song to utilize fully the stimulating power of music to inspire the people. …

Gordon Ashman, 1935–2003

Gordon Ashman and Folklore Studies Gillian Bennett We are sad to announce death of our friend and former colleague Gordon Ashman in August last year. I met Gordon in 1984 at Calendar Customs Conference hosted by Folklore Society and The English Folk Dance and Song Society. At time we were both mature students who had come to folklore after other careers; mine in teaching, his in RAF (he had risen to rank of Squadron Leader). He was then also closely involved with Institute of Industrial Archaeology at Ironbridge, Shropshire, and invited me to take part in a day conference he was organising there as tutor in Heritage Management. A natural joiner, Gordon was soon involved with other projects that were going forward at time. Inspired and organised by Craig Fees and Steve Roud, a group of us had come together as an informal study group that we were later to call, rather grandiosely, the British Folk Studies Forum. By 1986/7 we had some sort of organisational structure, even a membership, occasional weekend meetings, and we were putting out a newsletter and a magazine, Talking Folklore, of which Gordon was one of managing editors. I remember these as times as full of fun, effort, and togetherness: Gordon was involved with all these projects, greatly valued for his social and organisational skills (he was a born organiser and ever courteous, shrewd, and sensible). By 1989 he had joined FLS committee, and was soon minutes secretary. In 1995, however, he was diagnosed with leukaemia and, very wisely, pulled out of his commitments, including FLS committee. He accommodated his disease with courage and commonsense he showed in everything he did, putting what energy he had into his dearest project, West Gallery Music Association. Almost to last he managed to make his body do things that were important or pleasurable to him--singing, cycling, walking, and drawing. Unfortunately he missed last informal weekend gathering of what had been British Folk Studies Forum, held in Wales some three or four years ago, but I was pleased to have worked with him one last time on our life of Shropshire folklorist Charlotte Burne, which was published in Folklore in April 2000. He will be sadly missed. Gordon Ashman and West Gallery Music Association Dave Townsend Gordon's involvement with west gallery music began with his researches into musical traditions around his home in Shropshire. In Vaughan Williams Memorial Library he found some handwritten books compiled in 1830s by John Moore, a seed merchant from Wellington, containing local dance tunes and some items in four-part harmony, intended for church use. …

J. M. Carpenter, Ethel Rudkin and The Plough Plays of Lincolnshire

This article has its roots in two sources: first, my own research interests which cover the spectrum of British folk drama performances and second, work which is being undertaken by a team led by Julia Bishop of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield. Currently six researchers, each of whom has a special interest in the collection, are working to produce a catalogue of the James Madison Carpenter Collection of British folk material in the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. In this paper I intend to discuss the plough plays of Lincolnshire and then discuss the collecting activities of Carpenter and of another key Lincolnshire figure, Ethel Rudkin. I shall also discuss the work on the catalogue.

Much Ado About "Sweet Bugger All": Getting to the Bottom of a Puzzle in British Folk Speech

One of the lexical items differentiating British English from American English is the word bugger. Popular in England as attested by numerous idioms and its frequent occurrence in limericks, it is rarely used in the United States and if it is, it is without reference to its original sense of sodomy. It is suggested that this marked contrast in usage may possibly be related to different attitudes towards homosexuality existing in England and the United States.

British Folk Music on Records: The Fellside Catalogue

British Folk Music on Records: The Fellside Catalogue

British Folk Music on Record:

British Folk Music on Record: