The endless variety of England's folk traditions

New Statesman​

2 days ago

Photo by Tom Jamieson / New York Times / Redux / eyevine
Perhaps there are two kinds of people in the world. There are the collectors, the enthusiasts, who want to keep, save and preserve: 'Nequid pereat,' they might say, 'Let nothing perish.' Then there are the others, already on the phone to the skip-hire company. Lally MacBeth is firmly of the former persuasion. If you're of the latter, The Lost Folk might make you hyperventilate, so crammed is it with places, practices and stuff. The word 'save' appears many times. So indeed does the word 'skip', as in 'saved from a skip'. But persist, because you might see the culture of the UK in an unexpected light.
MacBeth says 'Britain', but even in her introduction she apologises for the lack of coverage of the devolved nations; her book stays close to her home in south-west England. It's forgivable: we only have one lifetime and it would take several more to extend her project into the Celtic countries. Generation succeeds generation, and what she wants to save is their multifarious folk productions, old and new. Of folk, MacBeth gives a definition that widens as we go: she means the unofficial, hand-made and localised, the private collections and archives, the pageants and dances, the costumes and cakes. If not physically saved, then everything must at least be documented, and the means of recording archived too. She writes: 'We must use all means of recording to build a full picture of the customs, traditions, people and places of Britain, and we must work to preserve all methods of documentation.' This picture is not just of the past, not only tradition or lore, but of now and the future because 'folk' is happening, arising and emerging everywhere.
In MacBeth's mind, her own predecessors now need saving. 'The Lost People' she calls them, meaning the early folklorists and folk collectors. Many have fallen from view, especially the women. Cecil Sharp, active at the turn of the 20th century, remains well known as the 'collector of folk song and reinventor of Morris dancing'. But despite being 'tireless', Sharp managed, in McBeth's opinion, to 'write women and people of colour out of his work… creating a folk that suited him: sanitised, classist, racist and very, very male'. To counteract that, MacBeth introduces us to an alternative roster of folk-collectors, often female.
From Victorian days into the mid-20th century, there were women who travelled about gathering recipes, stories, costumes, tools and 'country ways' just as these were dying out, and whose notebooks and collections were often dispersed or destroyed when they died. It sounds harmless but collecting was not without tensions: it could get competitive and, as MacBeth again notes, classist, with one social class (usually the upper-middle) making judgements about what was worth saving from among the productions of the lower orders. The invention of recording equipment was revolutionary, with people's voices and dialects also able to be saved, as well as their tales and tools.
There was, for example, Dorothy Hartley, born in 1893 in Yorkshire. Hartley cycled around collecting and interviewing and sketching. Thanks to her we know how to thatch a haystack, or bake bread in a brick oven. Others collected objects. Eva and Edward Pinto of Middlesex favoured 'wooden bygones': butter pats, mangles, hand-made boxes, toy animals and the like. They created a collection which soon outgrew their house, spilling into sheds and chalets and mocked up shops, which the public could view. Yet others were more nautically minded. In Gravesend, in a building fitted out like a ship, Sydney 'Long John Silver' Cumbers amassed a huge number of ships' figureheads. Cumbers sported an eyepatch, cigarette holder and yachting cap when he showed visitors around.
MacBeth's embrace even includes 'living' collections – or what photos and notes now remain. Upon retiring in the 1940s, the Welsh miner David Davis turned his hand to topiary, creating in his garden a 'mystical paradise' of tableaux, mostly biblical: there were bushes cut to look like angels, and a hedge shaped like the Last Supper. Many came to see it. One might ask: was it art? To which the author would reply – it was certainly folk. 'If it's by the people, for the people, it is 'folk'.'
Therefore, she welcomes the local parades and festivities up and down the land as folk. Hastings has an annual Jack in the Green festival as part of May Day, with Morris dancers, giants, milkmaids and choirs. There is Lewes's famous effigy burning. Penzance now has its mid-winter Moltol. Since 2017, Toxteth has held its own Day of the Dead, no less folk for being a modern introduction, and hardly traditional. Indeed, when it comes to tradition, there existed what MacBeth calls 'uncomfortable folk practice'. In Morris dancing, once the preserve of men, gender roles are now being contested. Molly dancing used to refer to men dressed as women, but today there are women's teams (or 'sides') of Molly dancers. In Bristol, the term has been reclaimed by a group called Molly No Mates, a 'queer drag Molly dancing team'. Some traditional Morris dances involved blackface, but in 2020, the Joint Morris Organisation agreed to ban the practice. 'It was a monumental moment in the history of Morris dancing,' says MacBeth.
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Pageants and galas are one thing, but what astonishes is the folk-stuff: the gloves and garlands, horse brasses and love spoons, pub signs and special cakes, the button badges, corn dollies, and 'obby 'osses. And it is everywhere, especially in pubs – and also in churches, where there are church kneelers, a special passion of MacBeth's. These are women's work, often embroidered to depict local scenes or stories. But the question keeps arising: if all must be saved – or at the very least recorded – what should be done with it? And where should it be kept? And who decides what goes where? 'Where people collect together of their own volition, there is folk, and it is not for collectors to judge the ways in which this happens or how the objects are made.' When decisions are made – when official museum curators judge that something should be brought in from the wild – it can be political. Take Sydney Cumbers' collection of figureheads: in 1953, he donated them to the Cutty Sark, where they are now displayed. MacBeth believes the fact that his collection was accepted 'was due in no small part to his… standing as a white male'. In contrast, there have been several efforts to establish an official museum of Romany culture, assembled from private collections, but all have floundered.
The book itself is a veritable trove. There is no index. Perhaps appropriately, one has to rummage. MacBeth herself spends a lot of time in junk shops, on Ebay, or in county archives, searching for photos and newspaper reports, noting and saving. Folk, she says, is what gives us a sense of place and belonging. Perhaps she's right about that – and perhaps folk is what will save us from the samey-ness of our high streets, the soullessness of our new-build housing estates. It might be a council-sponsored pirate parade, or even – ye gods – a knitted post-box topper. If it's a real, of-the-people creation or event, she says, it's worth recording, worth getting involved. We just have to alert ourselves to its existence. And cancel the skip.
Kathleen Jamie's books include 'Cairn' (Sort of Books)
The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk
Lally MacBeth
Faber & Faber, 352pp, £20
Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops
[See also: Jacinda Ardern's unexamined life]
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