The Folklore Society
The Folklore Society (FLS) is a learned society, based in London, devoted to the study of all aspects of folklore and tradition, including: ballads, folktales, fairy tales, myths, legends, traditional song and dance, folk plays, games, seasonal events, calendar customs, childlore and children's folklore, folk arts and crafts, popular belief, folk religion, material culture, vernacular language, sayings, proverbs and nursery rhymes, folk medicine, plantlore and weather lore.
News
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Folklore query? Ask the folklorists.
Register with the Yahoo! Talking Folklore group set up by Steve Roud.
Or send your enquiry to The Folklore Society using our Contact Form.
Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics
A joint publication of the University of Tartu, the Estonian National Museum and the Estonian Literary Museum, now available free online: http://www.jef.ee.
JStor Folklore Back Numbers since 1878
If you are a member of The Folklore Society and would like to set up your free account and password for JStor's online collection of back numbers of Folklore, Folk-Lore Record and Folk-Lore Journal, contact enquiries@folklore-society.com.
If you already have a password you can access JStor here.
Societas Magica: Richard Kieckhefer Prize
Click here for more details: http://www.societasmagica.org
Coming up
Folklore, Literature and Tradition through the Seasons
A series of one-day courses at The University of Wales Institute Cardiff
October 2011 to May 2012.
More information.
"Supernatural Places": 6th Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium
University of Tartu, Estonia, 4-7 June 2012
More information
After Grimm: Fairy Tales and the Art of Story Telling
A joint conference of Kingston University and the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy
6th – 8th September 2012
Kingston University, London
More information.
The Society for Folk Life Studies
Annual Conference, 2012
13th - 16th September
Manchester, England
More information
Conference: "The Brothers Grimm and the folktale: narrations, readings, transformations"
Athens, 22 - 24 November 2012
http://www.phil.uoa.gr./grimm_conference.html
Brian McConnell Book Award
Book Prize of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research
For more information, visit www.contemporarylegend.org
or contact ehenken@uga.edu
Gwyn Jones Fellowships at the Museum of English Rural Life
Caucasus Folklore Scholarship
The Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield invites applications for a fully-funded PhD scholarship dedicated to the folklore and literature of the Caucasus region.
Calls for Papers
Death in modern Scotland, 1855-1955: beliefs, attitudes and practices
Friday 1 February 2013 - Saturday 3 February, 2013
New College, University of Edinburgh
More information: peter.c.jupp@ed.ac.uk
The English Folk Dance & Song Society (EFDSS)
EFDSS has become one of Arts Council England's Regularly Funded Organisations to receive £400,000 of funding over two years. The funding will enable EFDSS to become a national development agency for folk music and set up a number of exciting new initiatives that will benefit the folk sector.
For further information, please contact EFDSS Marketing Director, Sophia Linehan, at sophia@efdss.org.
Archive folk music material
Now available online, from The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at The English Folk Dance and Song Society:
Forthcoming Events
Underground in Legend and Tradition: The Seventh Folklore Society Legendary Weekend
1-2 September 2012 at Matlock Bath Pavilion, Derbyshire, UK.
Professor Jack Zipes: "The Americanization of the Grimms' Fairy Tales"
Weds 12 September 2012, 5.00 p.m. at The Warburg Institute, University of London.
To book, contact enquiries@folklore-society.com
"Popular Antiquities 2": Folklore & Archaeology Conference at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London
13th-14th October 2012
Jointly hosted by The Folklore Society.
CALL FOR PAPERS.
Following the great success of the first "Popular Antiquities" conference in October 2011, this second multidisciplinary conference will continue to present and discuss the relationship between folklore and archaeology, their histories, materials, aims, methods and reception. Whilst the two subjects were, at one time, one and the same thing, the past two centuries have seen increased separation, and indeed hostility, between them. Through this conference, we hope to come closer to reconciling and promoting collaboration between the two disciplines.
The conference will also mark the celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Institute of Archaeology and the centenary of The Folklore Society Library's presence at University College London Library. For more details, contact t.paphitis@ucl.ac.uk, martindavidlocker@hotmail.com or enquiries@folklore-society.com, or telephone 0207 862 8564.
"Folklore and Fantasy" Conference
Friday 13th to Sunday 15th April 2012.
A joint conference of The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairytales and Fantasy, at the University of Chichester. Together with The Folklore Society Annual General Meeting 2012 on the Friday afternoon.
Alliterativa causa: Second Alliteration Conference
18 to 19 January 2013 at The Warburg Institute
CALL FOR PAPERS
Please email proposals of between 200 and 500 words to roper [at] ut.ee by the deadline of September 15th 2012.
McDowall Prize 2011
Congratulations to Janet Dowling, winner of the McDowall Prize 2011, for her essay "Naming the Green Man."
New Book: Alliteration In Culture
Papers from The Folklore Society's Alliteration conference of 2007
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=361599
The Katharine Briggs Lecture 2012
Wednesday 7 November 2012 at The Warburg Institute. This year’s speaker will be Dr David Atkinson.
The Katharine Briggs Award 2012
Publishers and authors are invited to submit their entries for the Katharine Briggs Award 2012. Books submitted for the Award must be published between 1 June 2011 and 31 May 2012. The closing deadline for entries is 31 May 2012. For more details and the application form, visit www.folklore-society.com/awards.
Folklore Society Library News
2011 was a very busy year for the FLS Library and Archives. We are very grateful to all the volunteers, part-timers and temporary staff who helped out, listed here in order of appearance: Sietske Fransen, Peter Kiernan, Katie Reid, Cassie Gonzales, Cathy Hull, Tom Goodman, Angharad Gwylim, Kieran Turner, Tabitha Cadbury, Jeremy Harte, Matteo Favaretto, Nick Wall, Mary-Elizabeth Blume, Morwenna Roche, Paul Cowdell. And if I’ve forgotten anyone, grovelling apologies. With their help, we managed to get our Archives and mss collections, 1250 Rare Books, 300 folios, and extensive Pamphlet collections reboxed, wrapped, tied, labeled and listed ahead of the deadline for University College London Library Special Collections removal to temporary (2 year) quarters at The National Archives at Kew. For information about ordering these items and reserving a seat in UCL’s reading room at Kew, contact enquiries@folklore-society.com.
Most our FLS Library books and periodicals, around 12,000 volumes, are held in a different store of UCL Library and many of these can be borrowed by FLS members. Contact enquiries@folklore-society.com or phone 0207 862 8564 for information on borrowing. We also hold around 1000 reference works at our FLS Office at The Warburg Institute; visitors can come and read them during FLS office hours, Monday to Friday, 2-6 (but please make an appointment beforehand).
The Katharine Briggs Book Award 2011
The Katharine Briggs Book Award 2011:
Folk Tales, Tall Tales, Trickster Tales, and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey: Recorded and Annotated by Herbert Halpert between 1936 and 1951, by the late Herbert Halpert and J.D.A Widdowson, published by The Edwin Mellen Press.
The prize was awarded to Professor Widdowson and Dr William Marcy IV of The Edwin Mellen Press at a reception on Wednesday 9 November at The Warburg Institute following a well attended and very enjoyable lecture by Michael Rosen.
- First runner-up: Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis, The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter (Oxford University Press)
- Second runner-up: Jay M. Smith, Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast (Harvard University Press)
The Folklore Society congratulates the winners and extends warm thanks to all the authors and publishers who entered their books for the award.
Click here for the short listed titles and the judges' comments on them
McDowall Prize
Entries for the McDowall Prize 2012 are invited: click here for more details.
Memorial Offerings
Floral Tributes to Steve Jobs outside the Apple store in Bath, 6 October 2011. Photo Leslie Currie.
Postcard of George Washington, from The Folklore Society Archives & Collections
Read Juliette Wood's article A Postcard to Commemorate George Washington's Birthday (pdf).
Folklore and Legends of Lincolnshire
By Mabel Peacock and Wilhelmine Fowler, Edited by Gillian Bennett [2010], available on CD, price £5.00 UK pounds. To place an order, email us using the contact form here.
Thomas Fairman Ordish
Thanks to the efforts of Andrew Bennett and his team of eager volunteers, The Folklore Society's collection of Ordish papers has now been transcribed. Although it is still very much work in progress, we now have available a DVD of boxes 1-5, price £10.00 UK pounds. To place an order, email us using the contact form here.
Podcast Series Exclusive
Listen to Part One of “Sir Terry Pratchett in Conversation with Dr Jacqueline Simpson”
A Tribute to William John Thoms (1803-1885), Creator of Folklore
5 September 2010, at the close of our fifth annual Legendary Weekend "Death in Legend and Tradition," at Brompton Cemetery, London, Dr Roper gave a short eulogy and laid a wreath on behalf of The Folklore Society on the grave of William J. Thoms, who first coined the term "folk-lore" in 1846.
Read Jonathan Roper's article Folklore vol. 118, Thoms and the Unachieved "Folk-Lore of England"
Click on images to enlarge
Congratulations to Professor Jacqueline Simpson, former editor of our journal Folklore and current editor of our newslettter FLS news, on her appointment as Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester's Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy
.Seasonal events filmed by Doc Rowe
Sign up to: H-Folk: H-Net Network on Folklore
http://www.h-net.org/~folk
A project organised by The American Folklore Society in partnership with The Folklore Society and other organisations
Dr Jacqueline Simpson, former President of The Folklore Society, in the persona of Madame Jezebel de Bellegrue, Head of the Guild of Seamstresses, with Terry Pratchett at the Discworld Convention, August 2008.
Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson are joint authors of The Folklore of Discworld, which was published by Doubleday in September 2008.
The Folklore Society Post-Graduate Research Bursary
Post-Graduate Bursary for Research. See the Post-Graduate Bursary page for more details.
"The Pearly Festival" by Estella Canziani (mid-1930s).
