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The Eleventh Hour? Monitoring the English Rural Tradition in the 1990s and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. D. A. Widdowson
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Extract

It is something of an irony that in many ways the rural tradition in English life was studied more intensively and systematically a century ago than is the case today. The burgeoning of scholarly interest in language, history, tradition and society at both local and national level in the late nineteenth century provided a wealth of data for modern researchers across a wide range of disciplines. While some of this material inevitably appears dated and indeed at times inaccurate or erroneous, there is a great deal of value in the records of rural life painstakingly set down by those pioneering chroniclers, notably in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and up to the time of the First World War. It has been fashionable in recent years to denigrate the work of these early writers and collectors, or indeed to dismiss them altogether. The label ‘antiquarian’, so glibly attached to several generations of nineteenth-century scholars, has become a pejorative, redolent of the amateur, the dilettante and the pedant. While it cannot be denied that a proportion of antiquarian writing is trivial, mundane or self-indulgent, it is manifestly incorrect to treat all such work with contempt. Indeed we are greatly indebted to these individuals, and especially to those whose methods and observations were as rigorous and scholarly as possible, given the criteria and standards of their day. Nor did they confine themselves within the constricting limits of our modern academic disciplines. Their interests were wide-ranging, and they closely observed the rural scene from many different perspectives, thus building up a much fuller picture of life and society in a given locality than would usually be the case today.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1990 , pp. 131 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

Notes

1 E.B. Tylor, for example, was equally at home in anthropology and folklore, and Max Müller of course approached both disciplines from the perspective of philology.

2 The solar mythology theory propounded by Max Müller and vigorously opposed by Andrew Lang sparked a major debate which ended only with Müller's death in 1900. For a cogent account of the debate, see Dorson, Richard M., ‘The eclipse of solar mythology’, Journal of American Folklore 68 (1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 393–416.

3 The longstanding debate between W.R. Bascom and R.M. Dorson centres on the former's suggestion that folklore should be limited to the verbal arts. See, for example, Bascom, W.R., ‘Folklore and anthropology’, Journal of American Folklore 66 (1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 283–90.

4 See Orton, H., Survey of English Dialects (A): Introduction (Leeds, 1962)Google Scholar; Orton, H., et al., (eds.), Survey of English Dialects (B): The Basic Material, 4 vols., each in 3 parts (Leeds, 1962–71)Google Scholar; Orton, H. and Wright, N., A Word Geography of England (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Orton, H., Sanderson, S. and Widdowson, J. (eds.), The Linguistic Atlas of England (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Upton, C., Sanderson, S. and Widdowson, J., Word Maps: A Dialect Atlas of England (London, 1987).Google Scholar

5 See Widdowson, J.D.A., ‘Lexical erosion in English regional dialects’Google Scholar, unpublished paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium, University of Sheffield, 1982.

6 See, for example, Trudgill, P., The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar; Heath, C.D., The Pronunciation of English in Cannock, Staffordshire (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar; Cheshire, J., Variation in an English Dialect (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar; Petyt, K.M., Dialect and Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire (Amsterdam, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 The evidence for this erosion is derived from a comparison between the data collected for the onomasiological section of the Atlas Linguarum Europae and that of the S.E.D. See Widdowson, ‘Lexical erosion’.

8 See, for example, Williams, A., Folk-songs of the Upper Thames (London, 1923)Google Scholar; Platt, C., Popular Superstitions (London, 1925)Google Scholar; Hull, E., Folklore of the British Isles (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Rudkin, E.H., Lincolnshire Folklore (Gainsborough, 1936)Google Scholar; Hartley, D., Made in England (London, 1939).Google Scholar

9 See Gomme, Allan, ‘The collection of English folklore: ways and means’, Folk-lore 64 (1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 321–3.

10 See ‘Central register of British folklore research’, Folk-lore 67 (1956)Google Scholar, 65, and Barnett, H.A. Lake, ‘The central register of folklore research in Great Britain’, Folklore (1959)Google Scholar, 289–99. This latter article optimistically notes in its conclusion that ‘The Central Register itself is a stepping stone to the period in the near future when we hope that every university in the country can provide facilities for the supervision of folklore research, for which the Folk-Lore Society has laid the foundations’.

11 See, Gomme, ‘The collection of English folklore’, 325–6.

12 A notable instance of this North American stimulus was the exchange of views at the Anglo-American Folklore Conference at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, in 1969. Following this conference a formal resolution, signed by twenty-four of the participants, which aimed to ‘draw public attention to the unfortunate neglect of folklore as a serious academic subject’, was addressed to the Vice-Chancellors and Principals of English universities. For a discussion of these matters, see Widdowson, J.D.A., ‘English dialects and folklore: a neglected heritage’, Folklore 98 (1987), 41–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 C.S. Upton and J.D.A. Widdowson of the Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language at the University of Sheffield and D.R. Parry of University College, Swansea, are engaged in the preparation of the dictionary of the S.E.D.

14 See, Pilkington, I., ‘Aspects of traditional and popular music in the Huddersfield area’, unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Sheffield, 1989.Google Scholar

15 The Folklore Society and the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and more recently the Society for Folk Life Studies and the Folk Studies Forum.

16 Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (London, 1956)Google Scholar; The Horse in the Furrow (London, 1960)Google Scholar; The Pattern under the Plough (London, 1967)Google Scholar; The Farm and the Village (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Where Beards Wag All (London, 1970)Google Scholar; The Days That We Have Seen (London, 1975)Google Scholar; From Mouths of Men (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Horse Power and Magic (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Spoken History (London, 1987).Google Scholar

17 This classification is based on that devised by Herbert and Violetta M. Halpert of the Department of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude, not least for their constant support and encouragement, but also for their unswerving championship of folklore studies.

18 See Scott, J.R., ‘A description and preliminary discussion of the rhymed blason populaire tradition in England’, Lore and Language 2, 2 (1975), 9–22;Google ScholarWiddowson, J.D.A., ‘Folklore and regional identity’Google Scholar, in Newall, V.J. (ed.), Folklore Studies in the Twentieth Century (Woodbridge, 1980), pp. 443–53Google Scholar; Widdowson, J.D.A., ‘Language, tradition and regional identity: blason populaire and social control’Google Scholar, in Green, A.E. and Widdowson, J.D.A. (eds.), Language, Culture and Tradition (Sheffield, 1981).Google Scholar

19 See, for example, Hole, C., British Folk Customs (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Sykes, H., Once a Year (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Shuel, B., The National Trust Guide to Traditional Customs of Britain (Exeter, 1985)Google Scholar; Smith, J., Fairs, Feasts and Frolics (Otley, 1989).Google Scholar

20 Wright, A.R. and Lones, T.E., British Calendar Customs: England, 3 vols. (London, 1936–40).Google Scholar

21 Märchen are still a feature of Scottish, Welsh and Irish tradition, however, and a few examples have been recorded in England even in recent years. See, for example, Widdowson, J.D.A., ‘Some folktales and legends from northern England’, Lore and Language 2, 4 (1976), 8–23.Google Scholar

22 For information on contemporary legend, see Smith, P. (ed.), Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, vol. 1 (Sheffield, 1984)Google Scholar; Bennett, G., Smith, P. and Widdowson, J.D.A. (eds.), Perspectives on Contemporary Legend vol. 2 (Sheffield, 1987)Google Scholar; Bennett, G. and Smith, P., Monsters with Iron Teeth (Sheffield, 1988)Google Scholar; The Questing Beast (Sheffield, 1989).Google Scholar

23 Data from the Survey of Language and Folklore include numerous examples of folk music and song collected in urban areas in the post-war years, and traditional dances continue to flourish in cities. The mummers' plays and other forms of traditional drama are as much an urban as a rural phenomenon.

24 Some of these changes are documented in Evans, Where Beards Wag All.