Storytelling special: Traveller Culture as represented on Tobar an Dualchais
Jess Smith on Traveller tales from the Tobar an Dualchais
(Images above: Photo 1: Jeannie Robertson, ballad singer and prominent contributor to Kist o Riches © School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh Photo 2: Jess Smith with her father Charles Riley © Jess Smith Photo 3: Belle Stewart and her daughter Sheila, notable singers from the Traveller community © School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh )
As part of Scotland’s Year of Stories, Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches www.tobarandualchais.co.uk is organising two events which will take place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh on 7 May. Jess Smith is one of three gifted storytellers taking part in ‘Stories from the Kist’, a special evening of storytelling in Scots and Doric relating to nature and place. Jess has spent many hours on the website in preparation for the event, listening to stories told by people whom she remembers from her childhood. In her second blog, Jess reflects on the Travellers’ recordings to be found on the Kist o Riches’ website and highlights some of the prominent contributors from the Traveller community.
The Scottish Traveller community has contributed almost 5,500 gems to the Kist o Riches so far.
The breath of material provided by them is amazing. They talk about Traveller by-names and give a few well-known examples. What part of the country did your Stewart come from? Was it the Brochan or the Tearlach? McPhees also had their ancestral boundaries. (Track ID: 2324) Hearing Travellers discussing this is an amazing conversation- it’s there in the ‘Kist.’
They sing songs, hundreds of them, in which they usually share the source and a brief explanation. Ballads are song-stories, delivered passionately with such powerful emotion that a listener can be moved to tears. (Track ID: 98339)
Thousands of tales- funny, sad, ghostly, scary, inexplainable and unrepeatable race around within a homely atmosphere and, once heard, are never to be forgotten. (Track ID: 21745)
Music of the peebs (pipes) is a form of mouth music (canntaireachd) learnt by children in syllables and freely shared, as well as graciously given, by pipers. Pipers come into their passionate best at weddings and funerals and Travellers know how to party. This is also in the Kist. (Track ID: 81919)
Trees grow deep inside the skin of mother earth; voices of forest knowledge share a wealth of information, along with the superstition of many trees. Flowers are also given their prominence among Travellers.
So who were the contributors? Duncan Williamson from Argyllshire, was born in a cave at Furnace, one of sixteen children. He was a genius in his family culture, an icon and a genuine professor of all things Traveller. (Track ID: 29627) He had been widowed when a certain field worker entered his life. They fell in love and later married. Duncan and Dr. Linda Williamson had two children and had lived in a large barricade (tent) as she immersed herself into the old ways.
Stanley Robertson from Aberdeenshire who was later to be awarded a fellowship from Aberdeen University shares a wealth of cultural stories, songs and ballads and allows the world to walk inside his life of summer travelling through the Kist. (Track ID: 42818)
Betsy Whyte was the first Traveller in Scotland to open her camp and invite the world to wander with her in her amazing autobiography ‘Yellow On the Broom’. In the Kist she shares hundreds of cultural gems. (Track ID: 110269).
Jeannie Robertson was unsurpassable in her art of ballad singing, an untrained voice that any opera house in the world would lay a red carpet at her feet, for a performance by her. She is in the ‘Kist’, as is her daughter Lizzie Higgins, and they are both well worth listening to. (Track ID: 29804)
Hamish Henderson formed a strong bond of friendship with the Traveller family, the Stewarts of Blair. He spent hours, nay months and years with his recorder perched in a corner of their sitting room listening to every conversation, singing, stories, riddles and pipes. Alex was the father, Belle his wife, the proud matriarch, and a fine singer/songwriter and their two daughters Sheila and Cathy, who all performed. (Track ID: 60118) Sheila was chosen to sing to the late Pope John Paul in 1982 during his visit to Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. She sang Ewan McColl’s song ‘Moving on’. The Kist of Riches indeed!
Hamish also formed a bond of friendships with Essie Stewart from Sutherland. Hamish’s friend Tim Neat went on to write a very popular book on the family entitled ‘The Summer Walkers.’ (Track ID: 35499)
There are countless others in the ‘Kist’ all happy to contribute and share what to them is a very precious part of their culture, who will tell you about the ‘sixth sense’ and even ‘Burker’ body snatching escapades. (Track ID: 65217)
There’s an enormous chasm of Traveller culture in the ‘Kist’. To be honest it is ‘fathomless’ but is this not the power of ‘magic’ when it is offered?
Go on dip a toe, dive in, and swim to your hearts content. Find more and enjoy- I have only given you a few tasters. As a Traveller it is my pleasure to share this with you.
Although the people responsible for the recordings are many, there are two people in particular worth mentioning as keepers of the dream- Steve Byrne and Dr Margaret Bennett. Steve Byrne was from 2002-2007 Traditional Arts Officer for the city of Edinburgh Council, before departing to work on Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches as a Scots Song cataloguer.
Margaret Bennett worked closely with Hamish Henderson in the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is an internationally renowned singer, folklorist and prize-winning author.
--- Jess Smith is happy telling any kind of story but her true gift lies in the rich kist of Traveller tales she has gathered since childhood. From a Scottish Traveller family, Jess was privileged to sit round campfires and be enthralled with stories of ancient kings, dragons, and all manner of heroes. She hopes that her storytelling brings people closer to understanding the Traveller community. More information about the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches storytelling events is available at:
Jess smith on the Tobar an Dualchais
Jess Smith is one of three gifted storytellers taking part in ‘Stories from the Kist’, a special evening of storytelling in Scots and Doric relating to nature and place. Jess has spent many hours on the website in preparation for the event, listening to stories told by people whom she remembers sitting around the campfire with as a child. In her first blog, Jess reflects on the significance which recording equipment has had on the preservation of memories and folklore, and the access to them which has been made available through the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches website https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/
“Simply ask yourself a question of the old and ancient ways and sure as sunshine, you’ll find all the answers you seek within the fantastic Kist o Riches.”
Memories nurture our souls. We close our eyes and relax, and remember the passing moments of our lives. The elders who left us so much to ponder- wise words, sad and happy songs, ancient ballads, poetry, and granny’s parting words of wisdom. They tell of wonders such as mermaids, selkies, fairies, kelpies, wizards, and wraiths. Memories provide a wealth of tales, superstitions, and healings.
Yet our memories only last as long as we do and those times fade, disappear, lost to the world. When people talk of olden days, it’s very much a personal sharing- we can only contribute so much.
Some people recognised that the ways of the past would indeed be dead and buried apart from in books, and that the natural rhythm of the voice would be silenced. Imagine the thoughts of those concerned with this loss when science stepped forward with a machine that could listen and gather those voices- the recorder was born!
What an amazing tool. Out into the open spaces, into the world, went the thirsty gatherers to catch the voices from the wind and secure them forever more onto recording machines; big wheels of ribbons, where the old crofter at the kitchen table relaxed amid their home surroundings and shared to the ‘big box’ as many tales and memories as they liked.
Traveller folks inside their tents of hazel, switch and twine cramped around the ‘big box’ and sang into the early hours. They spilt out around blazing campfires and swelt up their peebs to share for the very first time reels and tunes from their ancient bagpipes.
Lassies sang songs where there were no music notes to write down- the ‘box’ swallowed everything.
On and on the sturdy collectors ventured, further into the Highlands and Islands, gathering more and more. Tapes filled up, were marked, and stored.
What was becoming clear was that many of the recordings were of the Gaelic. To have Gaelic speakers recorded was crucially important at a time when English was fast overtaking the old tongue in schools and across the country. These voices and dialects were stored on reels and Gaelic students could learn from these recordings, and still do. Doric of the northeast and Scots from Perthshire can be heard too.
Science has since minimised those giant bulky reels. Now it is all digital. At the touch of a button the mystical, magical recordings heard in their natural form are contained and free to all! The Kist o Riches is available to everyone.
Dip a toe inside and allow the nostalgic waves to flow around you. An invitation awaits –take and surround yourself with this sea of recordings. Traveller tales and balladeers can be found together, along with wise words from the village church minister, memories from the crofts, stories told at a mother’s knee or at the old spinning wheel, musings from the ploughman and the shepherd, as they hold down onto a fence post in a howling gale, swearing blind it was an auld cailleach that soured the cow’s milk and stole the first lambs.
Where else in the world can you find a gathering of gems more precious than diamonds?
Simply ask yourself a question of the old and ancient ways and sure as sunshine, you’ll find all the answers you seek within the fantastic Kist o Riches. Songs and stories for all, and wisdom for the seekers.
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Jess Smith is happy telling any kind of story but her true gift lies in the rich kist of Traveller tales she has gathered since childhood. From a Scottish Traveller family, Jess was privileged to sit round campfires and be enthralled with stories of ancient kings, dragons, and all manner of heroes. She hopes that her storytelling brings people closer to understanding the Traveller community. More information about the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches storytelling events is available at:
Blog 3: Just Passing the Time?
Blog 3: Just Passing the Time?
As part of Scotland’s Year of Stories, Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches (www.tobarandualchais.co.uk) is organising two events which will take place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh at the beginning of May.
Donald Smith is one of the workshop leaders for the ‘Learning from the Kist: Storytelling Workshop’, and he has been spending time on the Tobar an Dualchais/ Kist o Riches website undertaking research for the event.
In his third blog, Donald looks at the significance of tests, challenges and puzzles in storytelling:-
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“Storytelling was, and is, a medium of learning, curiosity and imagination, but it is also a form of entertainment. If the storyteller fails in that primary function all else is lost.”
Riddles, guesses and guddicks are just three of the ways contributors describe clever word games. The website is full of them (eg Track 32660) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/32660?l=en).
‘Fits in the hoose, an oot the hoose, an in the hoose whan aa’s deen? The windows.’
‘What’s got a bed and never lies in it? A river.’
‘Fit his twa hauns an ne’er washes its face? A clock.’
‘What’s flying lying, and standing lying? A peewit’s crest.’
Verbal wit and games were ways of passing the time, through long spells of darkness or indifferent weather, without broadband, radio, terrestrial tv or perhaps artificial light. I once asked Willie McPhee - piper, tinsmith and storyteller - why he told stories. And Willie’s stories included some epics in which nine brothers went on nine quests, but all delivered in a consummately laidback and relaxing manner. ‘Och,’ says he, ’it’s a good way of passing the time.’
Storytelling was, and is, a medium of learning, curiosity and imagination, but it is also a form of entertainment. If the storyteller fails in that primary function all else is lost.
That is why so many stories contain tests, challenges and puzzles to keep the listener alert. A classic example is ‘The Three Questions’ which recurs with the same structure but lots of different details. John Stewart (Track 66102) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/66102?l=en) gives a popular version in which a king uses three questions to bully a miller into surrendering his daughter.
But the daughter’s sweetheart steps up to answer the questions disguised as the miller. He successfully fields ‘what is the weight of the moon?’, and ‘how many stars are there in the sky?’, but the clincher is his reply to ‘What am I thinking as I speak to you?’. ‘You’re thinking you are speaking to the miller, but....’ The appeal of this version is threefold: it is witty, the underdogs get the upper hand, and it is told with characteristic Stewart zest.
Inevitably Jack gets in on this act as well, not just outwitting adversaries but solving riddles. In Stanley Robertson’s tale (Track 67481), (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/67481?l=en) Jack frees the princess from dark enchantment by solving her riddles. According to Duncan Williamson, (Track 32663), (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/32663?l=en) prisoners could be freed if they set a riddle none could solve. His example (‘Upon Oak Leaves I stand....) caught Hamish Henderson’s imagination and inspired his last known poem.
Stories of wit sometimes feature ‘wise fools’. The Middle East has Nasruddin or Hodja, while Scotland has Daft Sandy and George Buchanan, the king’s fool. This is in itself a humorous inversion as George Buchanan was a famously learned, and very serious, Scottish scholar.
Daft Sandy is a favourite of Duncan Williamson. The point of course is that Sandy is not as daft as he lets on. But there is a further twist when Sandy plays to his daftness in order to outwit authority. So, he tricks a gamekeeper into reporting him to the police, but the evidence found on Sandy turns out to be a bag stuffed with grass with three pheasant feathers sticking out the top. From then on accusations against Sandy are laughed off and he can poach to his heart’s content.
George Buchanan often features in Duncan Willimason’s repertoire, but he is also a popular character among Gaelic storytellers. George is the contestant on behalf of the king in a Three Questions episode, but more often he uses earthy humour to best the king.
The king asks for ‘a bit of chicken’ after dinner, but George brings him an ‘an old hen’ ie an old woman instead. George obtains the king’s pardon for knocking off a knight’s hat, omitting to mention that the knight’s head was in it at the time. The ladies of the court expect to find flowers left beneath their gallants’ hats, but George leaves the Queen a turd beneath his headgear. ‘Never let us see your face again,’ says the king, so on his next appearance George shows them his backside. George is a wily anarchist! The historical Buchanan would have been outraged.
To pauchle the ideas of another scholarly George, the folk tradition is full of what George Davie called ‘the democratic intellect.’ Perhaps there is a bit more to it than just ‘passing the time’.
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Donald Smith has been an active participant in Scots and Irish storytelling for over thirty years. He is a regular workshop leader, lecturer and mentor to developing storytellers. Donald started the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and is also a founding member of the Scottish Storytelling Forum and Edinburgh’s Guid Crack Club.
More information about the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches storytelling events is available at https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/events?s=&to=&from=&from_sec=&to_sec=&start_date=07%2F05%2F2022
Blog 2 from Donald Smith on 'Jack' stories from Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches
Blog 2: A Hero Called Jack
As part of Scotland’s Year of Stories, Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches (www.tobarandualchais.co.uk) is organising two events which will take place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh at the beginning of May.
Donald Smith is one of the workshop leaders for the ‘Learning from the Kist: Storytelling Workshop’, and he has been spending time on the Tobar an Dualchais/ Kist o Riches website as part of his research for the event.
In his second blog, Donald focusses on the significance of the many ‘Jack’ stories to be found on the site:-
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“Being able to hear these stories is invaluable, as words on the page do not convey the art of storytelling in its full glory.”
When it comes to name checking there is one character right out front- Jack. Sometimes this is pronounced more like Jake, and to be fair there are lots of references to Silly Jack and Lazy Jack. But it’s all part of an extensive Jack catalogue.
Jack figures most often, though not exclusively, in stories told by the Scottish Travellers. The Traveller storyteller Duncan Williamson explains to Barbara McDermitt (Track 65820) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/65820?l=en) that Jack is the Travellers’ hero because he is of their own kind. This includes when Jack is lazy or out of luck or lacking in native wit, because Travellers have often had to thole being regarded as losers to some degree.
Yet Jack also has a resilient capacity to come out on top in the end through chance, kindness, or a gallus streak that sees him through. He may be lazy or silly but Jack can still outwit the giant (eg Track 36465). (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/36465?l=en) The underdog wins out and that makes Jack a Traveller hero. As Duncan comments, through the stories people of all ages, male and female, visualise themselves as Jack.
There is another importance to the Jack tales. They are exemplars of oral traditional storytelling as an art. Take for example the story told by Duncan (Track 29180) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/29180?l=en) in which Jack wins the hand of a princess through the help of an ant, a swallow and a salmon. This is a story built in threes as three brothers take three different gifts/blessings, go on three different roads with three sayings, encounter three helpers, and wind up with three different outcomes.
This oral patterning enables memory in the teller and the listeners. The story is something that can be passed on and enjoyed collectively because everyone can hold it in their mind, emotions, and in their visual imagination. Another fine example from Duncan Williamson’s repertoire is the tale of Jack and the Princess on the Glass Hill (Track 28935). (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/28935?l=en) Being able to hear these stories is invaluable, as words on the page do not convey the art of storytelling in its full glory.
Humour is also to the fore in the Jack stories. The Stewart family of Travellers are prime exponents of an exuberant and sometimes fantastic line of humour. Alex Stewart gives a prime example of this (Track 66728) https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/66728?l=en) when Lazy Jack nonetheless manages to trick the King into calling him a liar, so winning the contest. Again, hearing this is vital as the story is an exercise in speech rhetoric and pace so that we, the listeners, like the King, are caught off guard. Sheila Stewart continued this family tradition of bravura performance to great effect at festivals and international events.
There is an interesting tension here between family contexts and the way in which Traveller tradition bearers later reached a wider audience with their stories. The Travellers themselves repeatedly say (eg Track 31827) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/31827?l=en) that they remember stories and songs along with the family members who told or sang them. Re-telling is a way of commemorating and keeping their ancestors alive. Yet at the same time the Travellers exhibit what you might call ‘oral poetics’. Some are undoubted artists, yet for them the human and communal value of their traditions remain paramount.
That leads me to the humane values embedded in many of the tales. There is a life wisdom, compassion, love and a sense of justice. That includes the Jack tales even when they are also deploying humour and counter-cultural heroics. Stanley Robertson, the North-east Traveller is a notable example of this tender art. His key note tale of ‘Auld Cruivie’ is about living with the generosity of nature, and defying the oppressions of greed. Duncan Williamson’s ‘Death in a Nut’ (Track 36459) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/36459?l=en) is about accepting the part death plays in the continuation of life.
Jack is often wise in his foolishness.
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Donald Smith has been an active participant in Scots and Irish storytelling for over thirty years. He is a regular workshop leader, lecturer and mentor to developing storytellers. Donald started the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and is also a founding member of the Scottish Storytelling Forum and Edinburgh’s Guid Crack Club.
storytelling News: Year of Stories’ Blogs for Kist o Riches Storytelling Workshop
BLOG 1: LIFE STORIES FROM THE KIST
As part of Scotland’s Year of Stories, Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches (is organising two events which will take place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh at the beginning of May. In the first event ‘Learning from the Kist: Storytelling Workshop’, two highly experienced storytellers, Donald Smith and Ruth Kirkpatrick will demonstrate a variety of storytelling techniques and will select a few stories from the many to be found on the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches website and re-tell them in a way which demonstrates some of these techniques. Participants will get the chance to practise these skills. While researching stories on the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches for the workshop, Donald Smith has come across many recordings which have caught his interest and in this first blog he focusses on the stories and experiences of the Scottish Traveller community:-
“The great contribution of the website is to show how the extraordinary folktales sit in the context of everyday life.” Browsing this site you hear people talking about their lives in Scotland. They include islanders, highlanders, lowlanders and borderers, speaking in Scots, English and Gaelic. But not least amongst these voices are the Scottish Travellers whose experiences are directly from the front edges of existence. There are vivid insights into nature, sometimes with a distinct twist. Take John Stewart’s tale (Track 34599) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/34599?l=en) of a crow pecking at a tattie, when a brave whitret [weasel] attacked it by leaping on its back. The cow took off with the whitret still hanging on, but the fierce wee creature bit into the crow’s neck, it fell back to earth and the weasel escaped. According to John, a veteran humorist, the whitret kept the crow’s wing’s outstretched like a glider. It is easy to romanticise the Traveller lifestyle, with its love of nature, but it was a hard life and the Travellers exercised restrictions and taboos on women. A powerful direct testimony of this is Duncan Williamson’s account (Track 34511) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/34511?l=en) of how his Aunt Rachel decided to leave Argyll with a Traveller man, Johnnie Burke. Duncan’s father pursued them up the Rest and Be Thankful road, beat up the young Traveller, and brought Rachel home. Rachel never married and after her parents were dead, she committed suicide, aged forty-six. The Traveller defensiveness was of course a reaction to the prejudice and bad treatment they often received, and still receive, from the settled population. There are numerous accounts of unfriendly (and also friendly) encounters, oppressive police behaviour, and constant pressure to ‘move on’ from traditional camp sites. Recent research has revealed how in the twentieth century when many of the Kist o Riches recordings were made, ‘The Tinker Housing Experiment’ was forcibly removing children from Traveller families and seeking to eradicate their indigenous culture. The horror of this has to be set alongside the Travellers’ love of children, and their willingness to adopt illegitimate children who were outcast from the majority community. You can hear a lot of life wisdom in the recordings of Betsy Whyte. Her folk tales and memories run together. She comments directly (Track 77535) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/77535?l=en) on violence between men and women, often related to drinking. But she also observes how women gained in authority in Traveller society as they grew older, and how mothers and grandmothers became important figures in the social hierarchy. This is confirmed by Sheila Stewart who recounts how she was not allowed to tell certain stories or sing songs which were restricted to her mother Belle Stewart. Only after her mother’s death, for example, did Sheila sing the family’s keynote song ‘Queen Amang the Heather’. Betsy and Sheila both went on to write powerfully and eloquently about their lives, but the recordings here represent an earlier layer of first hand testimony. The great contribution of the site is to show how the extraordinary folktales sit in the context of everyday life. Stanley Robertson, the North-east storyteller, describes the Lumphanan Road as the magical journey of his childhood, leaving the city to travel once more. And one oak tree there he says was his ‘Tree of Life’ (Track 42818) (https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/42818?l=en). As those who were fortunate to know Stanley will testify that his defining tale was ‘Auld Cruivie’, which celebrated the ancient oak that came out of its bole on Midsummer to dance with the other trees by the river. Life in these Traveller recordings is seen in all its complexities.
Donald Smith has been an active participant in Scots and Irish storytelling for over thirty years. He is a regular workshop leader, lecturer and mentor to developing storytellers. Donald started the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and is also a founding member of the Scottish Storytelling Forum and Edinburgh’s Guid Crack Club. More information about the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches storytelling events is available at https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/events?s=&to=&from=&from_sec=&to_sec=&start_date=07%2F05%2F2022
Thanks to Elsie NicIlleathain. More blogs from the Kist to follow!
Witch Cakes and Baked Lore
By Ben Gazur
Food folklore is a tantalising subject but also, given the nature of its ingredients, an ephemeral one. If the material evidence of food folklore is not eaten during the performance of ritual, or simply because it is delicious, then it tends to rot away. There are however some morsels of food folklore that have stood the test of both time and hunger, resisted the work of weevils and fungi, and can now be found in museum collections.
Witch cakes have a long history. At the Salem witch trials it was revealed that a method of identifying the witches was used that involved the baking of a special cake. It was in January of 1692 when several of the young girls of the Parris household began to behave oddly. Bewitchment was soon thought to be involved.
Luckily a neighbour, Mary Sibley, suggested a way to find the culprit. She ordered her slave Tituba to bake a witch cake. The key ingredient was to be the ‘water’ of the young girls. The cake containing their urine was baked and then fed to a dog. The reaction of the dog to this treat is not known, but no indication of the witch was forthcoming.
Where the idea of a witch cake came from is unknown but it is possible that it was an old tradition imported from England by the Salem inhabitants. A contemporaneous almanac describes a way of curing ague by feeding a cake containing a patient’s urine to a dog. If the dog shook then the disease would be cured. The witch cake as used in Salem could have been a repurposing of an old folk cure.
What is known that there was a folk custom of crafting witch cakes in Britain that continued into the 19th century, though most bakers forgo adding their own body fluids to the dough.
Witch cakes of Britain operated more as charms and amulets than as methods of uncovering witches. The reports of witch cakes say that they were baked between the 1st and 6th of April each year. Made of a simple dough made from flour, salt, and water they are shaped into a ring with several spikes projecting out. Once baked to a rock-like hardness they were hung in homes as a charm against witches and all manner of other bad spirits. After a year a new cake was baked to replace the old one.
In the Pitt Rivers museum there is a well preserved witch cake collected in Flamborough in Yorkshire that was collected at some point before 1933.
[Image Link: http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID222156.html]
Scarborough Museums also contains an example of a witch cake said to have been baked in 1850. While several cracks have appeared on it the witch cake is surprisingly well preserved. [Image Link: https://folklorethursday.com/material-culture/superstitious-charmed-life-william-james-clarke/ ]
Collecting pieces of food folklore is something that has appealed to many collectors throughout history but most collections of charms have been broken up and disposed of. Some like that folklorist Edward Lovett however have been preserved and offer an insight into the material culture of folklore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Among the huge number of charms and amulets collected by Lovett can be found three rather unlovely crumbs of bread. Despite being collected around 1915 the fragments of white bread have held up surprisingly well. Currently held in the Cuming Collection these pieces of bread are catalogued as a curative charm. A strange piece of folk magic is referenced in their catalogue in relation to them. To cure a child of whooping cough a lock of hair was taken from the back of the child’s head and put between two pieces of bread. This hirsute sandwich was then fed to the first dog that was seen. By eating the bread and hair it was thought that the dog would take on the whooping cough. One must wonder why, if this was the supposed use for this bread, it was not digested by a dog with a sudden chesty cough?
Some food folklore however is supposed to last. One tradition has it that any bread baked on Good Friday will never go mouldy. Such bread was prized not only because it would never go “ropey” but because it was able to cure many diseases. By grating the bread into drinks it was thought to cure whooping cough. It was even grated into animal feed sometimes as a treatment for farm animals.
In Norfolk Good Friday bread was particularly trusted. An old lady reported that her neighbour was sure to die when an illness stubbornly refused to go away – “for she had already given her two doses of Good Friday bread without any benefit.”
Because Good Friday bread was supposed to be immune against the passage of time it is not surprising that at least one loaf made its way into a museum collection. Baked in 1919, the loaf in the Cambridge Folk Museum was examined decades later and found to be somewhat stale but free of mould. I’m currently trying to locate this loaf to see if it remains un-ropey.
Ben Gazur is an author and writer currently working on a book about food folklore. You can support his book by clicking here. If you know of any food folklore items lurking in museum collections then feel free to contact him at feastoffolklore@gmail.com.
Folk museums and collecting ‘folk’ material in the twentieth century
By Kate Hill
In 1959, Molly Harrison, curator of what was then the Geffrye Museum, wrote to Andrew Jewell, curator of the Museum of English Rural Life, ‘I am not completely sure what is and what is not folk material!’ – and he replied ‘I am not sure that I understand what folk material is either’. This was a little strange as the correspondence concerned the gathering of material for a Directory of Folk Collections, which he was undertaking for the Royal Anthropological Institute. The responses to his survey showed that a large number of museums around the UK held material which they considered to be ‘folk’. However, it’s clear that this was a broad and flexible category, used to describe everything from local history of any kind, to ‘Victoriana’ of any kind – it’s not surprising that there was some uncertainty about what was being investigated.
This is partly because of the way folk material emerged into museums earlier. Around 1900 a major change started to emerge in museum collections – whereas before this point museum collections had focused on classical material, natural history, and increasingly applied art and anthropology, ‘ordinary’ local historical material came, relatively suddenly, to be collected. Rapid change and urbanisation meant old ways of life seemed to be disappearing fast, and older things were increasingly aesthetically appreciated. Initially people such as Gertrude Jekyll, the garden designer, and a group of teachers, craftspeople and artists in Haslemere in Surrey, focused on the peasant - a rural figure untouched by the present whose life would be represented. In the interwar period, though, folk collections came much more to represent a broader idea of ‘everyday life’ in the past – encompassing domestic collections, craft, industry and much more. This was in many ways a response to the democratisation taking place in wider society, especially in education.
The other key innovation associated with folk museums is in display. Folk museums pioneered reconstruction displays, building on natural history dioramas, and on the display practices of international exhibitions in the last decades of the 19th century. Even before the arrival of open air museums, folk material had broken through the idea of displaying material just in relation to other examples of the same kind of thing, in glass cases, and had moved to displaying assemblages of things as they might have been encountered in the past – the fireside being an absolute classic of the interwar period. Such display methods show a desire to make the past more immediate, more intimate and more accessible – curators said they were hoping to make their museums interesting to ‘ordinary’ people and children – but there’s also evidence to suggest museum staff themselves enjoyed a certain amount of imaginative immersion through their playful engagement with museum material, dressing up, demonstrating skills, and even keeping livestock.
I’m currently undertaking research into the growth of folk collections, displays and museums between about 1920 and 1970 – some museums have been the subject of historical research, such as St Fagans National Museum, and the Museum of Cambridge. Yet, as my map above shows, this was a much more widespread phenomenon, from an earlier date, than has maybe been realised as yet, and I want to study it in a more holistic fashion, and think about how it has underlain the approaches to social and local history which we see in museums today. I will be making research trips to key places, but I also want to capture the breadth of the mid-twentieth-century museum trend towards the ‘folk’.
My key interests are in collections and display, as well as in the motivations of those making such innovations at the time, and if possible (unlikely I know!) any material relating to what visitors thought of folk material displays. I’m keen to hear from curators who may have collections of this kind from the period, especially if they know how those collections were displayed at the time, who collected them, and why. I’m also keen to hear how curators see and use these collections now. I’ve been surprised to find instances where all of collections like this are in storage – how do they relate to contemporary priorities in social history? How can/should they be used? Do they represent the historical sensibilities of the period when they were collected? What sort of display are they suited to? Please get in touch with me at khill@lincoln.ac.uk if you have anything you’d like to share with me!
Title Image: Map of self-identified ‘folk’ collections at museums, 1945 and 1959. Data for 1945 from M. M. Banks, ‘Folk Museums and Collections in England’, Folklore 56: 1 (1945); data for 1959 from survey material held at the Museum of English Rural Life. Many thanks to Dr Ollie Douglas for drawing this material to my attention.
Dr. Kate Hill is Associate Professor of History and Deputy Head, School of History and Heritage, at the University of Lincoln khill@lincoln.ac.uk
Folklore in Museums
Ironstone mining began in Redcar and Cleveland in the 1840s. By 1872 some 1,648 miners arrived to the East Cleveland villages, migrating from Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland and Norfolk and even as far as the Cornish tin mines. With this migration came various superstitions and folklore from the coal and tin mining traditions.
The Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum’s (https://ironstonemuseum.co.uk/) collection of ironstone bibles reveals possible connections between artistic expression and the mining traditions of protection whilst underground. Creating small hand held art works out of local materials appears common across all mining communities, and objects like this were probably created as souvenirs and heirlooms to sell to local folk for a profit. Many would include special messages to loved ones. The ironstone bibles decoration vary, they are often gilded, sometimes including flowers or a simple border around the edge. Some are inscribed with daisy wheel patterns, but it is not known if this was meant for protection.
Working as an ironstone miner was a dangerous job, underground in dark and dirty environments so it was understandable that miners were prone to some superstitions when it came to their working life. Miners worked for long hours and the miner’s wife would often choose to work first thing in the morning, this was to avoid being seen by the men while on their way to work. Miners believed that if they saw a woman before going off to work something bad may happen to them in the mine. Whistling in the mines was forbidden and coined as 'the music of the Devil'. Omens of death included a howling dog beneath the window of a house and the crowing's of a cockbird in the still hours of the night. A popular saying in most villages was 'A whistling woman and a crowing hen Are neither fit got God not men'. Many early ironstone miners believed in the existence of underground spirits possibly from sparks down in the pit. Elves, pixies and gnomes are even said to have lived deep underground playing tricks on the miners and stealing their food.
Please contact alice@ironstonemuseum.co.uk if you would like to know more about their collections.
Post by Alice Hanby, Collections and Engagement Officer, Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum
Folklore in Film, Television and Museum Exhibits
By Diane A. Rodgers, Co-founder of the Centre for Contemporary Legend and Senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.
Folklore is a living, evolving part of our everyday lives and is present in the cultural artefacts that surround us. Significant elements of this cultural fabric are film and television, streamed into homes via a number of devices and from across many different countries and decades. My research interest lies in how folklore is communicated onscreen in this way, not only by what is represented on screen, but how and in what contexts. Examination of such texts can suggest to us how customs and rituals change over time and evolutions of belief and attitude, which directly affect how people may experience relevant archive material.
For example, consider the representation of Voodoo in Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) or shrunken heads in numerous cinematic examples, including Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1994). Texts like these may be the very first experience many people have with concepts about such physical artefacts, before having come into close contact with them in a museum and, perhaps, even before questions about racism or colonialism are raised for them (the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford recently removed its famous collection of shrunken heads as part of a decolonisation process).
Dried cats such as those exhibited at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, traditionally placed in buildings for luck or to ward off evil spirits, can be given a more sinister dimension of magic by film and television. For example, ‘Baby’ an episode of Nigel Kneale’s 1976 television series Beasts, features a couple finding a dried creature in an urn, bricked up in a wall. In this case, however, rather than bringing any kind of luck with it at all as an apotropaic device, this dried curiosity has in fact been imbued with an extremely unpleasant curse.
People’s encounter with such exhibits are likely already coloured in some way by (potentially problematic) onscreen representations and it is vital to study the way folklore is presented in popular media because of this. Museum exhibits can educate and reshape common understanding, providing unique and additional contexts to such material as an experience in themselves. I am a fan fan of both Powell and Pressburger’s classic wartime film A Canterbury Tale (1942), in which characters stay in the Hand of Glory Inn and The Wicker Man (1953) in which Edward Woodward wakes up to a hand of glory burning by his bedside. Imagine my delight, then, when I happened across a ‘real’ hand of glory at the Whitby town museum collection some years ago. I look forward to more such future encounters, magical or otherwise!
Diane A. Rodgers
September 2020
Post by Diane A. Rodgers. Please go to the Members Area for contact details.
the peacock family, north lincolnshire
The Peacocks were a distinguished family of scholars who lived at Bottesford Manor and worked in North Lincolnshire during the later 19th and early 20thcentury. They were Edward Peacock (above left), and his seven children: Adrian, Edith, Florence, Julian, Mabel (above right), Maximillian and Ralf. Although a farmer, Edward was primarily an historian, who published numerous works from serious academic studies to popular novels. He educated and passed on his enthusiasm to his children.
Although based on studies of this area, most of the Peacocks’ work is of national importance. Edward’s two dictionaries of local dialect terms were ground breaking. A third volume compiled by Mabel and Maximilian, was eventually pieced together by Eileen Elder. Adrian wrote widely on agriculture and natural history, Florence was an historian and poet, Julian a genealogist, and Mabel the most widely recognised writer in Lincolnshire dialect. Maximilian was a collector of dialect and natural history observations.
The Peacock Family Archive is now part of the North Lincolnshire Museums collections. It consists of agricultural records, domestic records, common-place books, lesson books, drawings, photographs, diaries, personal correspondence and Lincolnshire dialect cards. An incredibly rich resource, it shines a light on the views and lives of people who lived in the local area from the early 18th century to the early 20th century.
The photographs here show Edward and his daughter Mabel, two of the people we have to thank for recording the local dialect.
Post written by Rose Nicholson, Heritage Manager for North Lincolnshire Museums, which includes North Lincolnshire Museum and Normanby Hall Country Park. Please go to the Members Area for contact details.
The Ethel Rudkin Collection
Ethel Rudkin (1893-1984) was a pioneering archaeologist, historian, folklorist, recorder of oral tradition, and collector of ‘bygones’, who lived and worked in Lincolnshire. She has been described as one of the last of the ‘old style’ antiquarians.
Ethel Hutchinson was born in Willoughton, and married George Henry Rudkin in 1917. He became a commissioned officer during the First World War, but tragically died in 1918. As a child Ethel visited the Peacock Family at Bottesford Manor with her parents, and this clearly fostered an interest in folklore and dialect for which she is best known. Her 1936 publication, ‘Lincolnshire Folklore’, is the best-known account of the subject in this area. It can be viewed as forming a direct succession to the work of Edward and Mabel Peacock.
Bob Paisley, Ethel Rudkin’s friend and editor of her fascinating diary has this to say of her legacy: “Due to her wide ranging interests, Rudkin never viewed individual subjects in isolation, and often discovered unique connections between folklore and tradition, archaeology and history. She was willing to pass on her discoveries and influenced a new generation of Lincolnshire archaeologists and historians.”
As well as copies of all her publications, the Rudkin Collection at North Lincolnshire Museum consists of notes, photographs, ephemera, her library of folklore and history books and archaeological small finds from throughout Lincolnshire and including comparative material from abroad. The star archaeological object is a Neolithic jade axe from Wroot. There is also a small collection of folklore objects, including a wooden hobby horse from a plough jag team and witch balls. Poignantly we also have one of Ethel’s handbags, which contains the flowers worn in her hair at her wedding to George and a handful of letters received from him whilst away serving during the First World War.
Post by Rose Nicholson, Heritage Manager for North Lincolnshire Museums, which includes North Lincolnshire Museum and Normanby Hall Country Park. Please go to the Members Area for contact details.
Folklore in Museums
The Coorg Battle Talisman. This object was created in India to protect the wearer in combat. The attendant stories about the item, gleaned from contemporary newspaper accounts, family tradition, and the museum accession register illustrate, with bloody immediacy, the circumstances in which many objects in UK museums were collected during the British occupation in India.
On April 3, 1834, Captain Robert Gordon from Kirkcudbright marched with a division of British and Indian troops into Coorg, southern India. Their objective was to depose Chikka Veera Rajendra, the ruler of that kingdom, who had ceased – according to the British – to be ‘a dependent ally of the East India Company’.
6000 men armed with rifles and Howitzers marched on Coorg. The Coorg resistance was brave but in vain. With minimal casualties the British forces routed the Rajah’s strongholds. Hundreds of Coorgs were killed. One of the dead carried this talisman with a Persian charm inscribed into the bronze:
‘He [the wearer of the talisman] is the Victorious, O Holy and Almighty God, the confirmation of Thy glorious command hath sent this wretched and insignificant person to make war against the enemy, but apart from the aid and favour of the Holiest and Most High I have no father. Therefore my sustenance depends wholly upon Him.’
This talisman or kavacha was probably bought from a sadhu or holy man. When carried into war the proper way to wear a protective talisman was over the heart or over the buttocks. The talisman addresses Madheva or Shiva. Robert Gordon picked it off the corpse of the soldier and later donated it to the Stewartry Museum in his home town.
Chikka Veera Rajendra was defeated, but he marched out of Coorg alive and very wealthy. His lands were forfeit but he received a monthly pension of £6000. In 1852 he and his daughter sailed to England. He pursued a case in the English courts to recover his fortune, but in vain. His daughter, Gowramma, was baptized by the Archbishop of Canterbury with Queen Victoria as her godmother.
Post written by Peter Hewitt, Museums Officer for Collections, Dumfries & Galloway Museums Service, founder of the Folklore Museums Network.