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Programme Friday 31 March 2017 13.00-- Registration opens 14.00–14.45: FLS Annual General Meeting (Folklore Society members only) 15.00-16.00: The Folklore Society Presidential Address by Professor James H. Grayson: ‗Son Chint'ae and the Foundations of Modern Korean Folklore Studies' (All welcome) 16.00-16.30: Refreshments 16.30-18.00: Panel 1 – Parenting, Grandparenting, and Old Age Daisy Butcher, ‗Stranger Birthings: Netflix‘s Stranger Things and Manifestations of the Terrible Mother Archetype‘ Dr Paul Cowdell, ‗Ghosts, Grandparents, Family Tradition and the Intergenerational Transmission of Folklore‘ Dr Melanie Lovatt, ‗Perpetual Liminality? Critiquing the Application of the Rites of Passage Framework to Residential Homes for Older People‘ 18.00-19.00: Reception 19.00— free to roam and forage for food 19.30: Event: for those who wish, there is Storytelling night led by Dougie MacKay at The Circus Café nearby: more details and booking information at http://www.tracsotland.org/scottish-storytelling-centre/centre-events/6418/guid-crack-tales-from-the-wild-edge Saturday 1 April 2017 9.30-11.00: Panel 2 – North American Narratives Dr Leticia Cortina Aracil, ‗―That without which it is not possible to live‖: Life and Death Motifs in Kirikou and the Sorceress‘ Rosalind Kerven, ‗Narrative Expressions of Marriage in Native American Myths‘ Alexander Long, ‗―Mountain Hollerin‖: A Field Study of the Banshee‘s Presence in Rural Appalachia‘ 11.00–11.30: Refreshments 11.30–13.00: Panel 3 – Societal Issues Dr Matthew Cheeseman, ‗The Liminoid and the Student Experience of Higher Education‘ Dr Ceri Houlbrook, ‗Locking Love: Padlocks as Rites of Romantic Passage‘ Joel Conn, ‗―The first thing to do, if you ever have to clear a house‖: Lawyers‘ Folklore Regarding Dealing with Estates of Deceased Clients‘
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13.00–14.00: Lunch 14.00–15.00: Keynote talk by Professor Margaret Bennett: ‗―By request, no toasters, no flowers‖: From the Cradle to the Grave, Echoes of the Past, Edicts of the Present‘ 15.00–16.00: Panel 4 – Fertility and Birthing Dr Anastasiia Zherdieva, ‗Cradles on Graves: Rituals of Fertility in Turkish Culture‘ Dr Natalia Dusacova, ‗Birthing Practices of Russian Old Believers: Between Traditional Midwifery and Official Medicine‘ 16.00–16.30: Refreshments 16.30–17.30: Panel 5 – Life Cycle and Landscape Sara Hannant, ‗A Charmed Life: Fertility Talismans, Healing Rituals and Funeral Tributes at Sancreed and Madron Wells in Cornwall‘ See Mieng Tan, ‗Bukit Brown Cemetery Exhumation: A Paradoxical Example of Nation Building in Singapore‘ 17.30: free to roam and forage for food 19:30: Event at Storytelling Centre: ‗The Art of the Storyteller‘ with Mara Menzies and David Campbell. To book, visit http://tracscotland.org/scottish-storytelling-centre/centre-events/6412/art-of-the-storyteller Sunday 2 April 2017 9.30–10.30: Panel 6 – Funerary Customs and Practices Professor Patricia Lysaght, ‗Death, Wake and Funerary Practices: Folkloristic Perspectives‘ Dr Helen Frisby, ‗Bidding, Baking and Waking: the Social and Emotional Significance of English Funeral Hospitality Customs, Past and Present‘ 10.30–11.00: Refreshments
11.00–12.30: Panel 7 – Carnival and Nostalgia Dr Lucy Wright, ‗―What a Troupe Family Does‖: Carnival Troupe Dancing and the Performance of Rites of Passage‘ Dr Catherine Bannister, ‗Making a Modern May Queen: Passage, Community, and Contradictions at the ―Smithyhill‖ Guide May Queen Performance‘ William Roberts, ‗Popular Remembrance of War in the Twenty-first Century‘ 12.30–13.30: Lunch 14.00–16.30: Visit to Celtic & Scottish Studies archive
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ABSTRACTS Dr Catherine Bannister (University of Sheffield) Making a Modern May Queen: Passage, Community, and Contradictions at the 'Smithyhill' Guide May Queen Performance Initially created to boost morale during World War II, the 'Smithyhill' Guide May Queen is now an established and elaborate annual custom for the Guides, Brownies and Rainbows of a village in the north of England. Preceded by months of rehearsals, and featuring dazzling costumes, dance and song, the event takes place over three evenings each May. Every performance culminates in the coronation of the Guide May Queen; a girl on the cusp of adolescence belonging to a local Guide group. For the Queen, the event is arguably a pre-teen / teenage rite of passage, infused with ideas of transformation, female identity development, and the constructing of her future self. However, the ceremony, which brings together the Guides organisation, local residents, and the parish church, also incorporates broader messages concerning community cohesion and belonging. These messages are embodied by the May Queen, and also imparted via preparations for the ceremony, the ceremony itself, and further related performances: a parade through 'Smithyhill', and a church service in which past and present Queens participate. This paper unpacks the performance, examining the tensions inherent in the event between the more conventional aspects of the May Queen ceremony—flowers, fancy gowns and femininity - and the modern female teenage identity, particularly in the context of a youth movement seeking to empower young women. Furthermore, it considers the purposes of this custom, that includes aspects of a particular type of Christian English-British identity, for a place which has undergone its own changes since this tradition's inception locally. *The name 'Smithyhill' is a pseudonym intended to ensure the anonymity of participants from the Guides, who I worked with during my PhD research. Catherine Bannister received her PhD from the University of Sheffield, where she researched the current ritual performances and customary practices of the Scouting and Guiding uniformed youth organisations. ********** Prof. Margaret Bennett (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) ‗By request, no toasters, no flowers‘: From the Cradle to the Grave, Echoes of the past, Edicts of the Present Within the human psyche there is a deep and enduring need to observe customs at every stage of life. This paper is a personal reflection on how we develop our sense of why customs matter to us, and suggests that, from an early age, customs may become part of our cultural identity. We then consider factors affecting change and invention and reflect on how people respond or react, particularly in communities with a long history of practices embedded in local traditions. Margaret Bennett is a folklorist, writer, singer and broadcaster. Her main interests lie in the field of traditional Scottish folk culture and cultural identity of the Scots, home and abroad. The late Hamish Henderson, internationally distinguished poet and folklorist, said about her: ‘Margaret embodies the spirit of Scotland’. From 1984 to 1996 she lectured
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at The University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies and now teaches part-time at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. A prize-winning author, she has written ten books, including Scottish Customs from the Cradle to the Grave (1993, rev. ed. 2011), contributed to over forty others, featured on media productions and several musical collaborations with her son, Martyn Bennett (1971–2005), including the National Theatre of Scotland’s acclaimed production, ‘Black Watch’. Recipient of previous awards for contributions to literature, folklore and culture, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Music (Glasgow, 2010), ‘Le Prix du Québec’ (for contributions to Quebec cultural studies, 2011) and was made an Honorary Professor of the Royal Scottish Academy in 2012. She is widely regarded as ‘Scotland’s foremost folklorist’. ********** Daisy Butcher (post-graduate, University of Hertfordshire) Stranger Birthings: Netflix‘s Stranger Things and Manifestations of the Terrible Mother Archetype Fear of the Mother has dominated mythology, folklore and fairy tales since time immemorial. Using psychoanalysis, I will highlight why we find the Evil Mother figure so terrifying. The Terrible Mother is a feminine archetype—a woman who is sexually dangerous, aggressive rather than submissive, and a threat to both men and children alike. Using the concept of vagina dentata (a fanged vagina) it is interesting to explore the ways in which the maternal and the pleasurable is subverted into the devouring mother and castrator. Peter Dendle states ‗the anatomical site of sex and childbirth becomes associated with the ultimate threshold of mortality: the gateway to hell.‘ The female therefore is commonly associated with entry into the unknown, the underworld and the other world as psychoanalysts such as Erich Neumann have explored. In Stranger Things the heroes are forced to enter ‗The upside down‘ through a tear in space/time which is reminiscent of entering the vagina/tearing the hymen. The demogorgon monster itself which terrorises the inhabitants of Hawkins by stealing children/adolescents has a faceless plantlike appearance which opens its deadly fanged petals to attack its victims. Dendle continues ‗Under its various guises, the vagina dentata transforms the sexual and reproductive female body into a wild animal, a deformed virgin, a tortured mother, a rape victim.‘ The vagina dentata in Stranger Things shows various manifestations of warped maternity as it bursts through the walls of the house: the domestic space, the womb, is shown to have substitute phalluses through the wormlike parasites implanted in its victims and is impervious to penetrative attacks such as stabbing, maiming and gunfire. Eleven, the telekinetic girl herself, is revealed to have been separated from her birth mother to be experimented on and the mother of the missing boy, Will Byers, is shown to step out of the marginalised role of worrying mother to hero. Therefore I will argue in my paper that Stranger Things is a story revolving around The Mother figure in the absent mother, the protective mother and the Terrible Mother/ folkloric vagina dentata. Daisy Butcher is a post-graduate student at the University of Hertfordshire, currently developing a dissertation project on the myth of vagina dentata exploring how femininity and evil are manifested in folklore and literature. Her interests lie particularly with Renaissance and Gothic literature and psychoanalysis. In 2016, she presented conference papers at: ‘Promises of Monster’ (University of Stavanger); The International Vampire Film and Arts Festival (in assoc with Univ. South Wales, in Transylvania); Slayage Con—The Whedon Studies Association (Kingston University); ‘Temporal Discombobulations’ (University of Surrey); and ‘Reimagining the Gothic’ (Sheffield University, where she also won a research award for innovative research for her paper). **********
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Dr Matthew Cheeseman (Southampton Solent University) The Liminoid and the Student Experience of Higher Education Many writers on UK Higher Education (HE) discuss the undergraduate student experience as a 'rite of passage' or as 'liminal'. Residential students are thought of as leaving one defined state and entering another, becoming 'increasingly socially, spatially and temporally divorced' (E. Kenyon, 'Time, Temporality and the Dynamics of Community', Time Society, 9 (1), 2000, pp.21–41, at p.37). Despite this awareness, there has been little empirical work on understanding such rites of passage. This paper draws on three years of ethnography in Sheffield to describe a student experience that resembles a rite of passage as described by Arnold van Gennep. It emphasizes that such rites are commercialised. Indeed, the influence of neoliberalism is contextualised in HE by way of Victor Turner‘s reinterpretation of liminality as ‗liminoid‘, a state where capitalism thrives (V.W. Turner, 'Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual Drama as Public Liminality', Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 6 (4), 1979, pp. 465–499). Finally, the persistence of rites of passage in writing on student life is contextualised within the postwar history of HE and interpreted as an attempt to locate resistance in what is already a heavily commodified experience. The paper thus uses empirical research to challenge interpretative literature and also demonstrate the strong theoretical connection between neoliberal capitalism and the liminoid. Matthew Cheeseman is Senior Lecturer in Media & Cultural Theory at Southampton Solent University, and a member of The Folklore Society’s Council. ********** Joel Conn (Independent researcher) ‗The first thing to do, if you ever have to clear a house‘: Lawyers‘ Folklore Regarding Dealing with Estates of Deceased Clients The legal profession, at least in Scotland, deals only in passing with most life events. Although the public may consult their solicitor in regard to matters tangential to birth or marriage (e.g. a house sale or purchase), death—and planning for death—may require a person to engage directly with legal advice and practice. Many people will seek the advice of a solicitor to write their wills and the same solicitor will likely be called some years later by the next of kin with the sad news of the client‘s passing and a request to handle the Executry (known as Probate or administration of estate in other jurisdictions). This paper will explore the folklore heard or shared by lawyers in regard to these life stages, with a particular study of: Folklore regarding hidden assets or the hiding of assets by the deceased; Folklore regarding unusual bequests or testamentary requests, and trying to give effect to them; and Folkloric elements or motifs contained within claims and disputes in contentious estates.
The paper will further study the different manners in which folklore is utilised in the area, both as the occupational lore of the legal profession (and within that, lore for the purposes of training or warning to younger generations, or for mere entertainment) and as folklore of the members of the public, who may be engaging with an unfamiliar legal process. Joel Conn is an independent researcher, a Solicitor and Notary Public (Law Society of Scotland)
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Dr Leticia Cortina Aracil (Independent Researcher) ‗That without which it is not possible to live‘: Life and Death motifs in Kirikou and the Sorceress The traditional animation feature film, Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), written and directed by Michel Ocelot, addresses postmodern interpersonal dynamics through the use of typical motifs of West African folklore. This approach emphasises the processes of mutual objectification between individuals and the community in the form of power bonds. The story unmasks the apparent necessity of these structures, stating that the true root of life is belonging to others through love. This is accomplished through a symbolic exploration of the climactic moments of life (birth, sexuality, and death) by using the language of the wonder tale as a vehicle. Due to this language, Kirikou‘s story is often misinterpreted as an African folktale. Ocelot constructs a narrative of his own by using themes from the African oral tradition, but consciously gives them a different meaning to that which they previously possessed in the traditional sources. While this type of story fits into the European category of a wonder tale, this would be a misnomer in African terms, where most of those narrations belong in legendary stories. Yet, this tale and the way in which it is displayed retain a relevant folkloric density that can be encompassed within the concept of rites of passage developed by Joseph Campbell. In this paper I will analyse the film‘s narrative structure from the standpoint of the hero‘s journey. I will demonstrate how Ocelot develops this theme for it to conclude in an inversion of the denouement of the classical mythologem of the katabasis. The reason behind this is that the focus of Kirikou‘s journey is not to defeat a physical death, but an existential state equivalent to death: the impossibility of interpersonal love. I will accomplish this through a contextual commentary on the narrative structure of the film and its symbolic resources. Leticia Cortina Aracil is a Philosopher (PhD from the Universidad Pontifica de Comillas, Spain), Archaeologist (MSc from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland), and Expert in Orientalism and Egyptology (ongoing, from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain). Her main research interests, from the standpoint of Philosophical Anthropology, focus on the existential interpretation of material culture, with an emphasis on corporeality and its impact on the building of world views. This comprehends diverse approaches, from Antiquity to contemporary interculturality, and rebounds on a critical approach to the theoretical limits of modern thought. ************* Dr Paul Cowdell (Folklore Society) Ghosts, Grandparents, Family Tradition and the Intergenerational Transmission of Folklore
During field research into contemporary ghost belief in Britain I came across many informants whose primary source of ghostlore and its negotiation was a grandparent. For many, grandparents were their first introduction to traditions of, and beliefs in, contact between the living and the dead. It is easy enough to rationalise such a connection, as grandparents are often our first experience of the loss of a close family member; but my research also pointed to the more direct transmission of ghostlore from grandparents to grandchildren rather than in a simple sequential chain through successive generations. I will consider how far this tendency is driven by the specific character of ghost beliefs, but I will argue that that is not the sole decisive factor and other dynamics are also at work. Intergenerational transmission allows for the consolidation of different registers of family tradition as folklore as well as illustrating the relative strengths or weaknesses of emergent family lore through time and successive generations. A belief, for example, may be enacted directly in the grandparent/grandchild interaction even as it loses force in the generation
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between them. A grandparent may be a useful conduit for verbal lore (like granddad jokes) that acquires traditional status within a family, but does so by creating a more widely recognisable traditional ‗character‘ (where I lean on the work of Glassie and Cashman). Folklorists also need to be conscious of how far the lore of a generation at more than one remove from our own, but to which we have a strong sentimental or emotional attachment, may fuel tendencies towards ‗salvage folklore‘, for example in learning of a tradition lost with a grandparent and only remembered by a parent. I will illustrate the argument with material from my ghost research and more widely. Paul Cowdell holds a PhD from the University of Hertfordshire and a MA in folklore from the University of Sheffield. He is currently an independent researcher and a member of The Folklore Society Council. ********** Dr Natalia Dusacova (Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow) Birthing Practices of Russian Old Believers: between Traditional Midwifery and Official Medicine This paper is based on interviews with Russian Old Believers from Moldova, Romania and Southern Ukraine conducted during fieldwork in 2016. Until the 1960s, there were no hospitals in the villages explored, so local women gave birth to children with the help of traditional midwives. When official medicine began to spread, the institution of midwives was not marginalized but started competing with it. A lot of women preferred birthing at home to doing it in rural hospitals. Local midwives not only knew how to relieve physical pain but remembered appropriate prayers and could serve as priests if a child was born weak and needed to be baptized as quickly as possible. In other words, traditional midwives shared vernacular knowledge with birthing mothers. When authorities prohibited the practice of traditional midwifery, local women did not abandon it—they started concealing the fact of giving birth with the help of ritual specialists. Later, women in labour started addressing both the traditional midwives they trusted and doctors who knew modern medical science: the two legitimate systems of knowledge co-existed, and people used both or one of them according to their needs. It resulted in a clear distribution of duties: doctors helped during the childbirth, midwives provided care for new mothers after delivery, bathed and treated babies. Nowadays, women prefer official medicine and equipped hospitals. As for local rural specialists who used to be midwives, they still treat new mothers and newborns for slight illnesses and cure the evil eye or share methods of protection from these misfortunes. Natalia Dusacova, PhD, is a researcher at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. She is a cultural anthropologist, and author of more than forty publications on the culture of Russian Old Believers in Moldova, Romania and Southern Ukraine. The fieldwork study on which this paper is based was funded by RFBR, according to the research project No. 16-36-60024 mol_а_dk. ********** Dr Helen Frisby (University of the West of England) Bidding, Baking and Waking: the Social and Emotional Significance of English Funeral Hospitality Customs, Past and Present
‗I have more than once heard friends, on taking their leave after the funeral tea, give some such comforting assurance to the bereaved family as the following: ―Well, nobody can say but what you‘ve given him (or her) a most beautiful an‘ respectable funeral […] You‘ve done ivverthing by
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him you could; there‘s neea two ways aboot that!‖‘ (J.S. Fletcher, A Book About Yorkshire. London, 1908, p.177). While the Edwardian folklorist J.S. Fletcher seems to have recognised the important social and emotional functions of hospitality customs at funerals, some of his colleagues were notably less sympathetic: ‗[s]ome of the humbler classes would half ruin themselves by their lavish expenditure at these times: funeral reform had not been heard of in those days unfortunately‘ (M.C.F. Morris, Yorkshire Folk-Talk. London, 1892, p.233). This paper will discuss the social and emotional dimensions of English funeral hospitality customs past and present. It will besuggested that historians, taking the accounts of contemporary folklorists at face value, have largely failed to appreciate ‗the consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the proper economic functions of several parties within the community, which, taken together, can be said to constitute the moral economy of the poor‘ (E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common. Pontypool, 1991, p.188) inherent within such apparently superfluous customs. Helen is an internationally recognised expert on the history, folklore and material culture of death, dying and bereavement. She’s appeared on The History Channel, BBC Radio 4 and the World Service discussing popular funeral customs in Victorian and later England. Helen has taught British and European history at UWE, as well as on the UK’s only degree-level funeral directing programme at Bath University. Current projects include a book on the moral economy of the Victorian folk funeral, and research into the gravedigger’s role, past and present, as a mediator of disposal and commemorative practices. ********** Prof. James H. Grayson (University of Sheffield, and The Folklore Society) Son Chint‘ae and the Foundations of Modern Korean Folklore Studies: The Folklore Society Presidential Address 2017 Modern Korean folklore studies began in the second decade of the twentieth-century during the period of Japanese colonial occupation, and reflected nationalistic aspirations and concerns. The key early figure in this movement was Son Chint'ae, folklorist, ethnographer, and historian, who promoted the concept of Sin minjok-chuui (Idea of a New People). His methods of research and his academic and nationalistic aims set the tone for much of twentieth-century Korean folklore studies. James H. Grayson is Emeritus Professor of Modern Korean Studies in the School of East Asian Studies, The University of Sheffield, and was President of The Folklore Society 2014-2017. ********** Sara Hannant (City, University of London) A Charmed Life: Fertility Talismans, Healing Rituals and Funeral Tributes at Sancreed and Madron Wells in Cornwall Wells have long been regarded as sacred—as a prime source of the waters of life and survival. Wondrous stories tell of cures, visions and divinatory practices occurring at holy wells and there remains a firm belief that wishing at wells can magically transform events.
In Cornwall, a folkloric practice is carried out to procure good health. A strip of cloth or ‗cloutie‘ is torn from a person‘s garment, dipped into the well then hung on a nearby tree. As it falls to the earth and rots, it is believed the illness will disappear. The cloths are said to connect to the
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opaque but powerful numinous—the divine power or spirits thought to inhabit the sacred place. However, many cloths do not biodegrade and are consequently removed by the Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network. In this presentation, I will examine the material evidence found at Sancreed and Madron wells in Cornwall. Among the remains of the healing ritual described, there are also votive and ex-voto offerings representing Pagan, Christian and Buddhist beliefs, ranging from fertility charms to funeral tributes. In response to this research I have created a series of photographs ‗Numinous‘ which were commissioned and exhibited by Forty Hall in London. The work explores a dialogue between contemporary votive rags, folk magic and the four classical elements of water, air, fire and earth, which are used to re-animate the discarded cloths.Celestial and human forms appear to be revealed in the images, suggesting that these are entities inhabiting the offerings. While we might not refer to these illusions as a divine power or spirits, at some level this recognition invites belief, prompting the viewer to contemplate visible and invisible relationships. Sara Hannant is a photographer whose work explores magical belief, seasonal cycles and folklore. Her book Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey through the English Ritual Year (2011) received the runner-up Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2012, and the exhibition of the same title is being toured by the Horniman Museum. Her recent publication with Simon Costin, Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic was published in 2016. Sara has exhibited widely including at The Royal Society of Arts, Sotheby’s and Towner Art Gallery. Her photographs have been featured on the BBC, and in The Guardian and The Sunday Times among others. Since 2010, she has lectured in photography at City, University of London. ********** Dr Ceri Houlbrook (University of Hertfordshire) Locking Love: Padlocks as Rites of Romantic Passage In 2006, Italian writer Federico Moccia published the romantic novel Ho voglia di te [I Want You], in which a character attaches a padlock to the Ponte Milvio, Rome, as a statement of romantic commitment. Local teenagers imitated the practice, ‗locking their love‘ by depositing a padlock—inscribed with their initials, names, dates, or personal messages—to the bridge and throwing the key into the river below. Unsurprisingly, tourists were soon following suit. The subsequent dissemination of this practice was rapid and geographically unbound, with accumulations of ‗love-locks‘ emerging in locations as distant and varied as Paris and Taiwan; New York and Seoul; Melbourne and Moscow. This paper will focus on the material evidence of two British love-lock assemblages: a growing accumulation in Manchester and the love-locks removed from Leeds‘ Centenary Bridge in 2016, following concerns that they were damaging the bridge‘s fabric. Cataloguing the inscriptions on these love-locks, it quickly became clear that their deposition was, in some cases at least, viewed as a romantic rite of passage. By ‗locking their love‘, the depositors were publically declaring their commitment to each other. In addition, some love-locks commemorated engagements, weddings, and anniversaries, and ethnographic evidence from elsewhere in the world supports this theory; in Moscow, for example, it has become the custom for couples to be photographed attaching a love-lock to the Luzhkov Bridge on their wedding day. This paper will explore the seemingly worldwide popularity of the love-lock as a romantic rite of passage by considering its symbolism, historical context, and cultural associations.
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Ceri Houlbrook holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Manchester, and is currently an Early Career Researcher at the University of Hertfordshire. Her research focuses on ritually concealed objects and contemporary ritual deposits. ********** Rosalind Kerven (Independent Scholar and Author) Narrative Expressions of Marriage in Native American Myths The search for the right marriage partner, by an individual and their interested relations, can lead to tensions familiar to people worldwide. These often continue long after the wedding ceremony. Some couples may be irreparably incompatible. Others may encounter jealousy from their parents, or come into conflict with their in-laws. Myths use allegory to explore issues around this pivotal part of the life cycle, and indicate acceptable behaviour. Few mythologies can rival those of Native America for their striking approach and humane vision. My paper draws on Blackfoot, Cree, Lillooet, Modoc, Pawnee, Shasta and Wasco historical traditions that explore important issues around marital harmony or discord. Extraordinary characters and situations include the man whose search for an industrious housewife ends with him wedding a Beaver; a young woman whose joy at marrying her charismatic idol is dispelled when her parents reject the resultant shape-shifting child; the hopeless union between icy Mountain Glacier and warm Chinook Wind; and a father lusting for his own daughter. Encounters with anthropomorphic animals and tricksters, and visits to the strange parallel world in the Sky, provide startling insights into the realities of marriage in all cultures. Rosalind Kerven is an independent scholar and the author of over sixty books published in twenty-two countries, including several bestsellers. With an academic background in social anthropology, she has been collecting and retelling Myths, Legends, Folk Tales and Fairy Tales from around the world for over thirty years. Her current work in progress is a definitive collection of Native American stories, using archived material originally collected in the field between the 17th and early 20th Centuries. Her previous books are published by Cambridge University Press, The British Library, British Museum Press, The National Trust, Oxford University Press, Dorling Kindersley, Pearson, and many other publishers including her own small imprint, Talking Stone. They include: Viking Myths & Sagas; Faeries, Elves & Goblins –The Old Stories; Arthurian Legends; English Fairy Tales & Legends; The Mythical Quest; Aladdin & Other Tales from the Arabian Nights; The Rain Forest Storybook; In the Court of the Jade Emperor (Stories from Old China); Earth Magic Sky Magic (Native American Stories) and The Slaying of the Dragon – Tales of the Hindu Gods. She has also written children‘s fiction and non-fiction, and numerous articles for magazines and journals. Her website is www.workingwithmythsandfairytales.blogspot.co.uk ********** Alexander Long (East Tennessee State University) Mountain Hollerin‘: A Field Study of the Banshee‘s Presence in Rural Appalachia
Suspicion, wonder, horror and contempt all sift through the mythic haze surrounding the banshee. Riddling the darker stories of Irish fairy and folktales, the banshee embodies the boogie in the darkness, the one all feared. Through all of her manifestations, this ‗death-messenger‘ stresses the importance of knowledge in society—the ability to foresee impending doom, even if it is shocking and horrific, allows the family time to prepare and get their affairs in order. Despite the banshee being regularly thought in folk and social belief as the Irish fairy/spirit, the Long family of Southwest Virginia does not exclusively see her as some screeching waif in the dark but as a very
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real part of the Holy Spirit that inhabits them through the practices of their faith, giving them power to wield at their discretion. Far exceeding ‗cultural source‘ folklore, the beliefs shared today by the community are‘experiential source‘ folklore which is felt on a daily basis. Conducting autoethnographic interviews with members of the community, along with close and extended family members, I have learned of the deep connection the family has with this enigmatic spirit. Often chided for our ‗banshee-ness,‘ the Longs find their spiritual power to be fulfilling and confirmation from a loving God who rewards His children who honour and follow Him. Comparing the lore which our ancestors kept with the present experiences of the family and all they visited, the essential characteristics of the fabled banshee will be analyzed as a translation into the very devout Spirit of the Appalachian Mountains. Alex Long holds a Master's degree with his research mainly focusing on folklore and the Scottish/Irish influence on Appalachian folkways and folktales, along with a large concentration of research on eighteenth-century literature both in Britain and in the United States. He works alongside regional authors, playwrights and directors on academic programs for secondary education students. Through his work with author/director, Adriana Trigiani, they have teamed together to form ‘the Origin Project’ which promotes youth in the community to research and discover their family's heritage and shared folkways. The program has published articles and stories and screenplays written by the regional youths annually for the last three years. ********** Dr Melanie Lovatt (Lecturer in Sociology, University of Stirling) Perpetual liminality? Critiquing the Application of the Rites of Passage Framework to Residential Homes for Older People The rites of passage framework has frequently been applied to residential homes for older people. Previous studies have focused on the first two phases of the framework: the separation phase, where older people leave their homes in the community and move into residential accommodation, and the transitional or liminal phase, where residents are conceptualised as existing in an ambiguous state. I argue that insufficient attention is paid to the possibility of the third phase—incorporation into a social grouping and acquisition of a new social status. Instead, residents are conceptualised as ‗stuck‘ in a perpetual liminality, where the only opportunity for resolution is through death. I suggest that the reason for this is a pervasive and continued assumption that residential homes are inevitably awful environments where residents face ‗institutionalisation‘ and irreversible decline. More broadly, resolution from the liminal phase into the reconnection phase depends on an imagined future which is often culturally denied to the very old, who are thought to be oriented primarily to the past. Here I present findings from data collected during twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in a residential home for older people in the north of England. I suggest that through everyday practices, such as cleaning and taking part in activities, and maintaining and forming new social relationships, residents were able to successfully reconnect in the residential home. I argue that for these residents, liminality was not an appropriate term to explain or understand the ways in which they experienced life in the residential home. Rather, ‗becoming at home‘ was an ongoing process which involved intersecting elements of past, present and future temporalities. That older people in residential homes are perceived as existing in a permanent liminal state reflects and reinforces a conceptualisation of older people as having no future.
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Melanie Lovatt has been a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Stirling since August 2016. She is particularly interested in the sociologies of ageing, health and illness, and death and dying. Her PhD (University of Sheffield) looked at how older people in residential accommodation make a sense of home (or not) through interactions with material culture. Prior to this, she completed an MA in folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a BA in history at the University of York. ********** Prof. Patricia Lysaght (University College Dublin, and The Folkore Society) Death, Wake and Funerary Practices: Folkloristic Perspectives The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a proliferation of literature on death in the western world. This literature included publications on death by scholars in a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history, folklore, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, in Europe and the United States in particular. Studies by folklorists concerning aspects of death beliefs and rituals during this period, especially in a Scandinavian context, include works by Juha Pentikäinen (The Nordic Dead-Child Tradition, 1968), Nils Storå (Burial Customs of the Skolt Lapps, 1971), Lauri Honko (‗Balto-Finnic Lament Poetry‘, 1974) and Aili Nenola-Kallio (Studies in Ingrian Laments, 1982). In Ireland, too, folkloristic studies and perspectives on dying, death, burial, mourning, and the afterlife of the dead, also appeared, especially from the 1950s. An overview study of death ceremonial in Ireland was published in 1952 and a regional work on the same topic appeared in the 1990s. Other work by folklorists in the Irish context has concentrated largely on different aspects of the death event, such as wake games, lamentation, omens of death, wake and funerary rites for young children, traditional burial practices and places of burial of unbaptized children, and so on. This presentation attempts an analysis of traditional death ceremonial in Ireland in the light of Arnold van Gennep‘s concept of passage rites or ceremonial patterns that mark an individual‘s transition from one stage of life to the next, or from one social group to another, in different cultures and societies. The presentation also deals briefly with the reconfiguration and recontextualisation of the wake for the dead as an element of mortuary practice in Ireland in view of the growing diversity of funeral services that reflect changing attitudes to death, religion, and institutionalised church authority in contemporary Irish society. Patricia Lysaght is Professor em. of European Ethnology (University College Dublin, Ireland), a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a Member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture which awarded her the Torsten Janckes minnesfond prize for scholarship in 2012. She was Editor of Folklore from 2004 to 2012 and was awarded The Harold Coote Lake Research Medal by The Folklore Society in 2013. She is also the incoming President of The Folklore Society (2017–2020). ********** William Roberts (Cardiff University) Popular Remembrance of War in the Twenty-first Century
While the Poppy Appeal and Service of Remembrance remain the best-known activities, during the United Kingdom‘s annual period of Remembrance there has been a noticeable development of both institutional and popular forms. There has been an increase in the number of fixed memorials to those who served in the Second World War, events and ceremonies associated with current conflicts, notably in Afghanistan, and since 2014, a range of activities commemorating the centenary of the First World War. The broader national context is summarised as a basis for
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considering the activities recorded in Cardiff, during the period 2010 to 2016. As the capital of Wales, Cardiff has a wider range of remembrance activities than many other cities of similar size; such activities include both formal institutional events and informal, often personal, forms of remembrance. There are a few elements which are particular to Cardiff and/or Wales, but the events in the city provide a useful example of remembrance in the present day. William Roberts is currently completing a PhD in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University, on popular participation in public events and ceremonies in the twenty-first century. His interests centre on the ways in which the activities themselves and the popular engagement illustrate or reflect traditional forms and behaviours. ********** See Mieng Tan (Postgraduate student, University of Edinburgh) Bukit Brown Cemetery Exhumation: A paradoxical example of nation building in Singapore Bukit Brown is a large, defunct Chinese cemetery in Singapore. From 1 January 1922, it served as a public Chinese cemetery and contained around 100,000 graves at the time of its closure in the 1970s. In 2011, the government announced that some 3700 graves would be cleared to build a major highway and housing. The announcements resulted in strong objections from the ground, comprising grave enthusiasts, nature and heritage activists, as well as the United Nations (J. Huang, ‗Resurgent Spirits of Civil Society Activism‘, JMBRAS, 87(2), 2014, pp. 21-45). The primary opposition centres upon the rich historical, cultural and biodiversity values of the cemetery that ought to be preserved instead of destroyed. Expressed in various forms such as petitions, online blogs, and Youtube videos, these collective voices contribute to the initial sparse body of knowledge about the cemetery, and more importantly, reveal the folklore of this particular burial site. Using secondary data, this paper discusses the case as a paradoxical example of Singapore‘s nation building efforts. The collective grassroots voices demonstrate that Bukit Brown Cemetery is a deathscape heritage despite the Singapore government‘s negation of it. The cemetery is home to the remains of many pioneers from the Chinese community in Singapore and native species of flora and fauna. The collective voices resound with Anderson‘s ‗horizontal comradeship‘ (B. Anderson, Imagined Communities 2006, pp.1-7), which is essential to the creation of a national community. Yet, the government has chosen not to harness the power of the collective to enhance its nation building endeavour. The strong grassroots dissent questions the government‘s nation building strategy and illuminates the invisible power of folklore in uniting (at least some of) the citizens. See Mieng Tan is a postgraduate student, from the University of Edinburgh. She is from Singapore and is passionate about death studies. In particular, she is interested in cemeteries, body disposal practices, mortuary rituals, and ancestor worship amongst the Chinese-Singaporeans. She has a Master of Social Science degree in Sociology from the National University of Singapore. She is expected to graduate with a Master of Science degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh this year. ********** Dr Lucy Wright (University of Sheffield) ‗What a Troupe Family Does‘: Carnival troupe dancing and the performance of rites of passage The term ‗troupe dancing‘ describes a range of competitive, team-formation dances from the North of England and Wales, whose origins lie in the popular town carnival movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, and which represents, I argue, a vibrant strand of contemporary folk performance.
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Troupes demonstrate a strong sense of community, simultaneously as members of individual troupes and as part of the wider ‗carnival world‘, frequently describing their team mates in terms that connote a family relationship, whether or not they are related. Drawing on conversations with troupe dancers, this paper reflects on the ways in which the ‗troupe family‘ functions as a site for the performance of rites of passage, both integral to and outside of the dance itself. This includes progression towards specific points of transition, including a dancer‘s graduation into the high-status ‗Senior‘ line, as well as the communal landmark of winning ‗Troupe of the Year‘ at the End of Season championships. At the same time, troupes provide a crucial lived context for the experience and negotiation of personal rites of passage associated with the life cycle, including births, marriages and death. In her exploration of ‗embodied geographies‘, Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather suggests that ‗there may be a latent need for certain rites (ceremonies) of passage to be reintroduced‘ (1999: 21). I suggest that in troupe dancing the benefits of conducting rites of passage are embedded within community organisation. Indeed, it might even be argued that troupe dancing is partially constructed from and for the performance of rites of passage. Through the conscious creation of shared ways of commemorating and bearing witness to a wide range of transitional stages both ‗on‘ and off the performance ‗arena‘, troupe families ensure the continued presence of ‗culturally appropriate ways of helping individuals win through‘ (Teather, 1999: 13).
Photo copyright: Lucy Wright Lucy Wright is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield, currently working on the AHRC-funded Digital Folk project (www.digitalfolk.org). Her primary research interests are contemporary English folk music and dance—in particular exploring the legacy of the town carnival movement in the Northwest of England—and the relationships between performance and material culture. Her recently completed PhD involved more than 18 months of fieldwork with members of the girls’ carnival morris dancing community in Greater Manchester, and some of the results are currently on display at Cecil Sharp House, in the photographic exhibition, This Girl Can Morris Dance. Prior to taking up an academic post, Lucy was lead vocalist in the BBC Folk Award-nominated act, Pilgrims’ Way, and she now pursues a parallel strand as a ‘socially-engaged’ artist. Her work involves re-imaginging a range of traditional performances and crafts and she currently has three morris dancer's hats on display at Compton Verney Art Gallery, as part of the exhibition, 'Creating the Countryside' (www.artistic-researcher.co.uk). **********
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Dr Anastasiia Zherdieva (Independent Researcher) Cradles on Graves: Rituals of Fertility in Turkish Culture The subject of the research is published materials of field work on rituals and legends about Turkish saints. In Turkish culture, saints are people who could perform miracles before and after their death. They could help one person or a whole village. According to oral narratives, which are spread all over Turkey, dead saints pray on their graves, never sleep, and sometimes they are reading in their shrines, and going to Mosques on Fridays. According to the official Islamic version, saints are God‘s close friends, therefore they are asked by people for numerous favours. It could be a request for a new job, luck in exams, cure from different diseases, but the most frequent problem is barrenness of women, animals, or lands. This paper concentrates on rituals performed for solving problems of barrenness. For example, rag cradles or baby's bootees are hung up on a saint‘s grave and should be swung by barren woman. In different cases, a woman should spend one night on a saint‘s grave, or she has to eat soil from a saint‘s grave to become pregnant. In the end, a woman has to vow that, if her wish is realized, she will make a sacrifice. It is believed that if the woman got pregnant but did not make a sacrifice she could die, become paralyzed, or could lose her child. After the child is born, if it is a boy three lambs should be killed and eaten on the saint‘s grave; if it is a girl, only one. Both girls and boys should be named after the saint who helped their mother became pregnant. The hair of a child should not be cut till s/he is seven years old and afterwards the first hair cut should be brought to the saint‘s grave. These rituals and ritual behaviour are analyzed in the present paper.
Anastasiia Zherdieva, PhD in Cultural Studies, is an independent researcher. She is mostly interested in mythology and study of folklore especially in Crimean and Turkish folk legends, but also relationships between legend and myth, sacred geography in legends, the miraculous in myth consciousness. **********
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