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Introduction
Matthew Cheeseman
This collection explores folklore and folkloristics within the diverse and contested national discourses of Britain and Ireland. Together, these chapters examine the role of folklore in shaping the islandsâ constituent nations from the eighteenth century to our contemporary moment of uncertainty and change. Throughout this period, folklore, in all its variety, often functions as a vehicle for nationalist thought and sentiment, just as discussions of nation invoke the folk as a conceptual unity and source of authenticity. To some extent, this is bound up with the disciplinary apparatus of folkloristics that developed as a result of, and in dialogue with, nationalism. Across Europe, it was the act of collecting and publishing folklore that mobilised tradition in the service of the nation. The terms of this service have often been realised in artistic pursuits, as successive waves of writers, singers, dancers, photographers and bloggers have drawn from both folklore and (whether knowingly or not) folkloristics to create their work.
The deployment of that wordâfolkloristicsâwrinkles some noses, and so it might: not a particularly elegant word, but one that serves a purpose in that it demarcates disciplinary thought from its subject of study. This distinction between folkloristics (the academic discipline that studies folklore) and folklore (shared, traditional culture, often expressed in performance) is maintained in this introduction, as it is in some but by no means all of these chapters, some of which prefer âfolklore studiesâ or just use folklore to refer to both. That uniformity has not been editorially imposed speaks a little about this collection. There are 17 authors herein, one of whom is a practitioner, a storyteller whose performance has been textualised. Eleven might describe themselves as folklorists in varying degrees of separation, some appending folklorist with another discipline, often the one in which they are employed to research. Of these, we have three (myself included) who work in creative writing, a couple of historians, and others who lecture in or research journalism, photography, media and cultural anthropology. Then we have five writers from cognate disciplines: two from English literature, along with an archaeologist, an anthropologist and a sociologist. This is not to segue into one of those jokes: it is to underline the interdisciplinarity of this volume.
There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the volume is interdisciplinary because folkloristics, especially when England is involved, depends on disciplinary alliances. This is a peculiar, Janus-headed situation: on one side the struggle is as real as it can be for a discipline with marginal presence in twenty-first-century higher education, yet at the same time folklore is popular both outside the academy and within (where other disciplines remain interested). In essence, the appeal of, support for and reach of folklore far exceed those of folkloristics. For those who identify as folklorists, it can be hard to accept this, as the fortunes of the discipline provoke a defensive stance. Not so here. This volume is edited by myself, a folklorist, and Carina Hart, an English literature academic. We have thought particularly about the tacit knowledge that both disciplines support and propagate and have attempted to address these in our discussions with authors. I would like to extend my thanks to Carina for her openness to folkloristics. This is a book about folklore and it is a book that emerges from the discipline of folkloristics, but it does so in strategic and fraternal alliances with those other disciplines and practices that also look to folklore.
It does not do so out of expediency, either. This volume is interdisciplinary because its subject of study is complex: we explore the cultural relationships that shape tradition and its scholarly study, focusing on nationalism in Britain and Ireland and its further intersections with art and literature. Our book has antecedents. It builds on another interdisciplinary collection, Timothy Baycroft and David Hopkinâs (2012) Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century, but it takes a longer view of a smaller area, with material through the twentieth century and into the contemporary. Like Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity (Gibson et al. 2012), we take a broad approach to nationalism, thinking on the complex interactions between ideology and cultural performance. That is not to say that mass political movements are not present here; indeed, it would be hard not to refer to Irish independence, Welsh and Scottish nationalism, devolution and Brexit. Following Simon Bronnerâs (2002) Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition, we are open to popular and literary culturesâ purposing of folklore. As in William Wilsonâs (1976) Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland, there is a focus on the ways folklore is deployed across the political spectrum and, in some of our chapters, by politicians (for this, see Oinas 1978). Following both Herzfeld (2020) and Anttonen (2005), careful attention is given to the relationship of nationalism to both folklore and folkloristics.
Many areas are not covered. Although this book discusses folk dance, there is little on folk music and nationalism, partly because much has been published already, and partly because the scholarship in this area has tended to reflect national concerns (see, for example, West 2013; Winter and Keegan-Phipps 2015). Given this, a separate, focused collection specifically addressing song, scholarship and nation in Britain and Ireland may be warranted. That is not to say that this volume occludes partisan or national perspectives in favour of an âunbiasedâ or âimpartialâ reading; in relation to nationalism, and in particular Ireland, this is impossible or should be (see Brady 1999). Minorities and immigration feature only in part here; in that context, Kathy Burrellâs (2006) work addresses immigrant experience in Britain via an attention to narrative. Although a focus on landscape is shared with Gibson et al. (2012), heritage and tourism are not considerations as they are in that volume and elsewhere. Certainly with respect to Ireland, this has been well covered by Eric Zuelow (2009).
The most recent, comparable study of nationalism would be Tim Nieguthâs (2020) collection Nationalism and Popular Culture. The introduction, which looks at popular culture and quotidian nationalism, is particularly relevant as it asks how nationalism is embedded in dayto-day life, discussing the âquotidian turnâ in nationalism studies. This attention to the everyday results from the work of Michael Billig (1995) and emerging literature on everyday nationalism (see Nieguth for more). While this is certainly congruent with folkloristicsâ attention to the vernacular, the focus in that work is on understanding nationalism, particularly in response to theories of elite, industrialised nationalism such as Andersonâs (1983) and Gellnerâs (1983). Instead of sharing this focus, the present volume is more concerned with understanding folklore, particularly through its intersections with the narratives of nation entwined within art, literature, disciplinary practice and lived experience. By taking these into the twenty-first century, we see how ideas of the folk have inspired and informed varied points from the Brothers Grimm to Brexit.
We hope ours is a timely volume, especially as the nation surges with newfound global and local rhetorical power, encompassing everything from exclusionary ideologies to inclusive visions of community. The nations of Britain and Ireland have been adapting to the real and imagined changes implied by parliamentary devolution, the Scottish independence referendum and the UKâs withdrawal from the European Union. Our collection aims to ask why, when and how folklore has been deployed, enacted and considered in the context of national ideologies and ideas of nationhood in Britain and Ireland.
Folklore Happens Through Networks
Like many edited collections, this book has its origin in a conference: in this case âFolklore and the Nation,â an iteration of the annual conference of The Folklore Society, held at the University of Derby, 29â31 March 2019. The volume developed through the network established there, building on previous scholarly relationships between some of its participants. Although the conference was international, many of the participants were English, as befitting, perhaps, Derbyâs position close to the centre of England. For this reason, more than any other, the authors in this collection mostly live in England and identify as English (amongst, of course, other identities). That is not to say that they do not write about Ireland, Scotland and Wales (and indeed other places), but it is to uncover another tacit aspect of scholarly work: it is fraught with asymmetric working conditions. Even for those who have tenured posts, research time is increasingly beleaguered. Getting anything done is a battle with time and a bargain with resources, which is why, perhaps, conferences play such an expedient role in the editorial processes of edited collections. That is not to say that conferences do not form cognate groups (and indeed we have spent much time in shaping this one further), it is only to underline that the conference brought a critical mass together and myself and Carina saw it through.
One compromise to doing so, in this volumeâs case, is in diversity. All our authors are white. The proportion of male-identifying to female-identifying writers is 2:1. As in much professional practice, we have kept our sexualities and disabilities to ourselves. All of this explication is not to draw simple lines between identities and ideas or to infringe in any way on academic freedom, it is to recognise something that folklorists know all too well: the context of production, for any text, is crucial, and so we should talk about it. That our authors are predominantly English tells one story, but identities are always complex. Terry Gunnell, for example, is from Birmingham but has spent much of his career at the University of Iceland. Likewise, Shonaleigh Cumbers, a Derbyshire resident, is the daughter of Dutch Jewish immigrants, whose tradition she carries. For many of the writers here, their work is necessarily local and community-based. I will return to the regional later; it will suffice for now that the badges of identity (nationality, race, gender, etc.) are both connected to the real (we have passports, for example), but also performed and imagined, and thus flexible and variable.
We have a range of writers in terms of both age and academic rank. Yet, this sentence too papers over an interesting, and pertinent, division. If, as underlined previously (and ably demonstrated by the writers assembled here), one does not have to write about folklore from the discipline of folkloristics, one can, therefore, write about folklore and evade the rules of any discipline. One of our authors, Jeremy Harte, would only submit to the general discipline of the scholar and not that of the academic speciality. He does so in order to think more widely and further, performing the kind of speculative work that academics now characterise as coming from an interdisciplinary space. Certainly this approach used to be more commonplace, and indeed there is the measure of an eighteenth-century vicar about his step.
Such thoughts, though, are informed by the historical distinction, within folkloristics, between amateur (often a collector, unpaid) and professional (a folklorist, sometimes a collector, often drawing a salary). Over time, however, this distinction has come to meanâor rather, has come to indexâsomething else. Despite the decreasing number of folklorists drawing a salary (in England, certainly, although there were never many), the term âprofessionalâ has come to index âacademicâ or even âperson communicating via scholarly publishing.â Perhaps this has shifted in contrast to the term âamateur,â whose meaning seems to have changed in response to digital media. Here the term has begun to index âenthusiast appealing to other enthusiasts,â especially via social media. It should also be remembered that folklorists communicate via trade and self-publishing, alongside other monetised avenues. There is little new about this; popular enthusiasm for folklore has long supported such âentrepreneurialâ writers, publishing on a broad continuum from scholarly expertise to imaginative writing. The positioning and negotiation of authority and knowledge that occur under all of these appellationsâamateur, professional, scholar, entrepreneurâare one of the concerns of this book. Paul Cowdellâs chapter on literature, folkloristics and Margaret Murray deals with this directly, and so too does Kate Smithâs work on fascism and Paganism.
The authors of six chapters present aspects of their doctoral studies, either ongoing or recently awarded. The energy from this work is notable and gives this volume a sense of dynamism. Tabitha Peterken, for example, presents contemporary, collaborative fieldwork with the fishing community on the Yorkshire coast. These fisherfolk understand themselves on an international level, on the very border (or absence of it) between the United Kingdom and the continent or âEurope.â As Peter-ken points out, such is the metaphoric keenness of this imagined line that their perceived plight has been of national concern on both sides of the Brexit negotiations. Another of this group of writers, CiarĂĄn Walsh, presents a reassessment of the anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon based on original archival research that reveals Haddon was (amongst other things) an anti-colonial innovator influenced by anarchism. In doing so, CiarĂĄn explicitly carries out an Irish reading of Haddonâs work, returning him to a central position in the âAnglo-Irish folklore movementâ (Chapter 5, 78).
Explicating and revealing the hidden have long been traditional pursuits of scholarship. With the best intentions, this does not mean that collections such as this do not have their lacunae. My directness concerning the Englishness of many of our writers (excepting some, such as Walsh, who is Irish) stems from two directions: firstly, a general desire to be open about knowledge production (the processes of publishing, from the conference to the editing of the chapters, serve to discipline authorial voices and therefore it is good practice to discuss them), and secondly an awareness, with respect to this volumeâs focus on Britain and Ireland, that a lack of openness on authorial identity will only stymy any sense of shared scholarly endeavour. That most of the authors here are English is pertinent to the themes of the book because, historically, England and Englishness have hidden in Britain and Britishness, cosier under the Union Flag than the Cross of St George. There are many reasons why this might be so; one is to better prosecute colonial relationships with Ireland, Wales and, as has been claimed, Scotland. The extent of evasiveness in this relationship has long been debated, although it is certainly clear, with devolution, that Englandâs presence, whether in dominion or union, can no longer be silent (Featherstone 2009; Kumar 2003, 2010).
Andrew Robinsonâs richly illustrated account of photographic surveys of English calendar customs demonstrates the developing awareness of England within the English. There are three periods of surveys, each connected to a period of ârevivedâ interest in folklore (the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the mid-twentieth century and the twenty-first century). Older surveys habitually elided and overlooked the distinction between Britain and England, something the contemporary ones cannot. Indeed, the boundary of and with England is now of huge relevance to Britain and Ireland, both to those seeking to dissolve ties to England and to those seeking to understand the borders of their own Englishness. The production of this volume is thus bound up in slowly releasing tensions: literally so, as the conference in Derby convened through the first, putative date of Brexit (midnight on 29 March 2019), and the completed manuscript was submitted to the publisher within spitting distance of the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020. While all of the chapters were written in or around this time, one-third directly deal with the contemporary. Of course there are further themes on which they provoke and cohere, and, as with much scholarly work, the chapters are tightly and rigorously focused on their specific topics. Because of this, we have sequenced them historically rather than thematically.
Evidently this has been a time of heightened interest in nationalism, yet it has not been the only time of heightened nationalism within this volume, which is interested in the historical nations of these islands and their long histories of national struggle and realisation. Indeed, the complex interactions between the Celtic nations and England are...
