British folk traditions

In 1964, two young academics clambered into a red Mini and, armed with a mountain of printed slips, set out to conduct what would become the definitive survey of English folklore and traditions for the next 60 years.

John Widdowson and Paul Smith went to town centres, ­community halls, Women’s Institute meetings. They handed the simple forms out to anyone who visited Sheffield University, where they were based. And they wanted to know the answer to one simple question: what do you know to be true?

Now held in the university’s archives, the thousands of replies make for illuminating reading, creating a patchwork of observances, superstitions and local legends, passed down through families and communities.

“Don’t bring hawthorn blossom into the house. It’s bad luck,” wrote David Smith of London, who had learned this from his mother, Molly, then living in Scarborough.

The story related by Florence Swaby of Hertfordshire was perhaps a little more dramatic: “Just outside the village, part of the road is called the white highway, and at that point there are two large open fields and the devil haunts there. This is the story handed down from my great grandmother and really happened …”

Exactly six decades on, the Survey of Language and Folklore is finally being updated, with a more scientific method than two men in a Mini handing out questionnaires almost at random. The Centre for Contemporary Legend, based at Sheffield Hallam University, is to conduct the National Folklore Survey, financed with £271,000 of government money from the UK Research and Innovation body.

The project will be led by David Clarke along with Diane Rodgers, also of Sheffield Hallam, and Ceri Houlbrook and Owen Davies who founded the MA Folklore Studies course at Hertfordshire University. It will be conducted by Ipsos-UK, ­polling almost 3,000 people in the first phase to create a clearer picture of what folklore means today.

The new survey aims to address “the lack of robust research evidence into the cultural value of folklore in post-Brexit, post-pandemic, multicultural England. It aims to create new data to answer two research questions: ‘How have folkloric beliefs and practices shaped England’s social, cultural and spiritual identity?’ and ‘To what extent are ideas of nationalism and colonial attitudes informed by contemporary notions of English folklore?’”

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“You might think that in an increasingly technological world we have no place for folklore, but it seems to be the opposite. Technology and mobile phones create a kind of disenchantment in people’s lives, and I think they’ve started to realise that. The revival of interest in folklore is a wonderful thing, and long may it continue.”