Wednesday 17 August 2022

When Packaging Counts

I received this week a very welcome reprint. In the early 1990s, Penguin published a great series of folktale collections. There were variations in the series, but it contained some brilliant anthologies by weighty and reputable scholars like Jacqueline Simpson (Scandinavian Folktales) and Henry Glassie (Irish Folktales).

 

It also included two magnificent collections by Neil Philip, Scottish Folktales and English Folktales. The latter was absolutely essential to me when I first came to folklore. For an MA class assignment I wrote on ‘The Small-Tooth Dog’, collected by Sidney Oldall Addy in Derbyshire, picked enthusiastically if randomly from this book. (The photograph here is my copy, bought second-hand in Highgate Village, and I’m surprised at how well it has borne its heavy use).


The Penguin Book of English Folktales, ed. Neil Philip (London: Penguin, 1992)

It wasn’t just that its 136 stories were marvellous, nor that they provided an invaluable snapshot and overview of the earlier collections of tales. The book also provided a useable small scholarly apparatus of Aarne-Thompson Tale Type numbers alongside the bibliographical data. As an editor, Philip was everything I could have wanted: his Introduction was fascinating and informed, shedding critical light on the stories, the narrators, the folklorists and the re-tellers, all with a sympathetic and shrewd writer’s eye for their qualities. On my beloved ‘Small-Tooth Dog’, he wrote, briefly but astutely: ‘The only real Beauty and the Beast story recorded in England, this succinct narration seems to me a much more potent text than Madame Leprince de Beaumont’s wordy and literary La Belle et la Bête (1756), which has been the basis of almost every retelling ever since.’

 

Such an historically informed and solid collection was clearly vital as a way of orienting the reader to oral traditions as well as scholarly interactions with them, so its unavailability for many years was a blow. This kind of book becomes all the more essential as volumes of retellings of traditional tales proliferate, as it helps the ever-growing numbers of people fascinated by this wonderful stuff to understand it a little better, to understand what might lie behind and around it.

 

I would have welcomed its reappearance in any form, therefore. What arrived this week, however, exceeded my expectations. It is more durable than my now-retired paperback, obviously, but that is only one criterion. The book is essentially a straightforward reprint of the 1992 volume with a couple of additions. (The apparatus reprints the Aarne-Thompson details, although the Introduction to the reprint does cite updated Aarne-Thompson-Üther numbers). Philip’s 2022 Introduction takes account of the flourishing storytelling scene since his original publication, and uses this and more folkloresque interpretative and creative uses of folklore (my description, not his) to offer a magnanimous reconsideration of some of his earlier comments. He gives Ruth Tongue the benefit of the doubt this time – I remain more ambivalent, but I take his point – and he points to Maureen James’s convincing work as clearing up his concerns over Marie Clothilde Balfour. He also, excitingly and compellingly, points to the durability of the oral tradition. As he notes, ‘the English folktale, far from being moribund, is alive and kicking’ (xix). 


The Watkins Book of English Folktales, ed. Neil Philip (London: Watkins Media, 2022)

But there is something, too, in its presentation. The book is extremely attractive. The title of each story is contained within light black-and-white decoration – nothing too fancy, but elegant rather than austere. The beautiful cover features imagery invoking both specific stories and a more generalised view of folklore as it might be understood by an interested contemporary audience. It appeals to what a readership might think it already understands, while bringing readers to a body of work that will flesh out and expand dramatically that understanding. It seems the perfect meeting and interaction of form and content, aimed at the specific conditions of current interest in folklore.

 

In this respect, the Foreword by Neil Gaiman is charming and outstanding. Gaiman, with his usual generosity of spirit, outlines exactly the voyage of discovery awaiting those who have come to it without perhaps fully expecting what they will find within, just as he did when he read the first edition. The cover will get people in. Neil Gaiman will get even more in. And when they arrive, they will find folklore in all its riches, courtesy of Neil Philip. An exciting journey of discovery awaits, and this is exactly how such a journey should be prepared.

Tuesday 16 August 2022

Catching Up

I’m rather surprised to find how long I’ve left this blog. There have been times when that might have reflected inactivity, but in the last year or so I’ve actually been getting underway again. Perhaps it’s because I’ve only recently recovered from having finally caught COVID that I’m taking stock a little, and recognising signs of some return to engagement.

 

It may in fact appear that I’ve been rather productive, as I’ve revisited some older projects for conference papers and online talks as well as finally publishing a couple of pieces of rather long gestation. I returned enthusiastically to ghostlore for the recent International Society for Folk Narrative Research conference, and will be presenting an expanded version of this for the Folklore Society later in the year. This year should also finally see publication of a chapter I wrote while recovering from surgery on metaphor in academic and vernacular discussions of ghosts. While that publication is still ahead, it is very much a conclusion to several years’ work.

 

An earlier paper for the Folklore Society’s excellent Open Voices: Folklore for All, Folklore of All conference also saw a return to ghostlore, combined with one of my other current preoccupations, disciplinary history and its ongoing reception. As I began that paper, ‘There is a spectre haunting folklore – the spectre of folklore itself.’

 

For British folklorists, and English folklorists specifically, there are many historical and historiographical issues still to be addressed, especially under conditions where interest in folklore has never been greater. How do we deal with the legacy of the weaker periods in our disciplinary history? What is that legacy? That was one of the drivers behind my interest in the prolific and fascinating Violet Alford. Over a (too) protracted period I’d spoken about her many times, with the result that pretty much everyone involved in folklore in Britain had chipped in at some point. Whatever deficiencies still remain in my arguments, those contributions strengthened what I wrote, which was finally published in Folklore. I’m hugely grateful. This is a collaborative process.

 

The other area where I’ve been trying to trace the legacies of some more doubtful British folklore studies – Murray and Frazer in particular, who remain powerful poles of attraction outside academic scholarship – has been through representations in popular culture. I followed up my Western Folklore article on Folk Horror with a chapter in this collection, tracing similar themes and representations in a 1930 crime novel.

 

I haven’t quite said my last word on this subject, but that’s still work in progress.

Clearing the decks in this way does allow me to sharpen my focus on such works in progress, as well as on projects which are not so far advanced. It’s a nice feeling.