The Folklore Society · Lablypedia

It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief. The foundation was prompted by a suggestion made by Eliza Gutch in the pages of Notes and Queries.

Members

William Thoms, the editor of Notes and Queries who had first introduced the term folk-lore, seems to have been instrumental in the formation of the society: as was G. L. Gomme, who was for many years a leading member.

Some prominent members were identified as the "great team" in Richard Dorson's now long-outdated 1967 history of British folkloristics, late-Victorian leaders of the surge of intellectual interest in the field, these were Andrew Lang, Edwin Sidney Hartland, Alfred Nutt, William Alexander Clouston, Edward Clodd, and Gomme. Later historians have taken a deeper interest in the pre-modern views of members such as Joseph Jacobs.

A long-serving member and steady contributor to the society's discourse and publications was Charlotte Sophia Burne, the first woman to become editor of its journal and later president (1909–10) of the society. Ethel Rudkin, the Lincolnshire folklorist, was a notable member; her publications included several articles in the journal, as well as the book Lincolnshire Folklore. Classicist Katherine Raleigh was also a member.

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Collections

The Folklore Society Library has around 15,000 books and more than 200 serial titles (40 currently received) and is held at University College London Library and Special Collections. Its major strengths are in folk narrative and English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folklore; there are also substantial holdings of east European folklore books, and long runs of Estonian and Basque folklore serials.

The Folklore Society Archives and Collections include folklore-related papers of G. L. Gomme and Lady Gomme, T. F. Ordish, William Crooke, Henry Underhill, Estella Canziani, Denis Galloway, Barbara Aitken, Margaret Murray, Katharine Briggs and others. The society's archives and collections are held at University College London's Special Collections.

Presidents

1878–79 James Grimston, 2nd Earl of Verulam
1880–85 Frederick Lygon, 6th Earl Beauchamp
1885–88 George Byng, 3rd Earl of Strafford
1888–92 Andrew Lang
1892–95 Laurence Gomme
1895–97 Edward Clodd
1897–99 Alfred Nutt
1899–1901 Edwin Hartland
1901–03 Edward Brabrook
1903–04 Frederick York Powell
1904–07 W H D Rouse
1907–09 Moses Gaster
1909–11 Charlotte Burne
1911–13 William Crooke
1913–18 Robert Ranulph Marett
1918–20 Alfred Cort Haddon
1920–22 W H R Rivers
1922–24 Henry Balfour
1924–26 J L Myres
1926–28 A R Wright
1928–30 R M Dawkins
1930–32 E O James
1932–35 H J Rose
1935–37 S H Hooke
1937–39 Mary MacLeod Banks
1939–43 John Henry Hutton
1943–45 L F Newman
1945–47 FitzRoy Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan
1947–48 H J Fleure
1948–51 Walter Leo Hildburgh
1951–53 Arthur Allan Gomme
1953–55 Margaret Murray
1955 T W Bagshawe
1956 (No president)
1956–59 Sona Rosa Burstein
1959–61 Sir Arthur Waugh
1961–63 Mary Williams
1963–64 Peter Opie
1964–67 Douglas Kennedy
1967–70 Katharine Briggs
1970–73 Stewart Sanderson
1973–76 Hilda Ellis Davidson
1976–79 J R Porter
1979–82 W M S Russell
1982–84 Carmen Blacker
1984–87 Venetia Newall
1987–90 John Widdowson
1990–93 Roy Judge
1993–96 Jacqueline Simpson
1996–99 Juliette Wood
1999–2002 W. F. H. Nicolaisen
2002–05 Marion Bowman
2005–08 W. F. Ryan
2008–11 Eddie Cass
2011–14 Robert McDowall
2014–17 James H. Grayson
2017–20 Patricia Lysaght
2020–23 Owen Davies
2023-current David Hopkin

Katharine Briggs Award

The Katharine Briggs Award is an annual book prize awarded by the Society in honour of Katharine Mary Briggs (who was the society's president from 1969 to 1972). The prize has been awarded every year since it was first announced in 1982. Notable winners include Israeli historian of social memory Guy Beiner (2019), American scholar of fairy tales Jack Zipes (2007), English mythographer Marina Warner (1999), British radical historian E. P. Thompson (1992), English married team of folklorists Iona and Peter Opie (1986) and Soviet folklorist Vladimir Propp (1985).

Winners of the award are:

1982: Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, Wives for Sale: an Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce (Basil Blackwell)
1983: Michael Pickering, Village Song and Culture (Croom Helm)
1984: Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool (Harvester Press)
1985: Vladimir Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, edited by Anatoly Liberman (Manchester University Press)
1986: Iona and Peter Opie, The Singing Game (Oxford University Press)
1987: Amy Shuman, Storytelling Rights (Cambridge University Press)
1988: Hilda Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe (Manchester University Press)
1989: J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans Language, Archaeology and Myth (Thames & Hudson)
1990: Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning (Cambridge University Press)
1991: Simon Charsley, Rites of Marrying: The Wedding Industry in Scotland (Manchester University Press)
1992: E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (Merlin Press)
1993: Georgina Boyes, The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology, and the English Folk Revival (Manchester University Press)
1994: Claudia Kinmonth, Irish Country Furniture 1700-1950 (Yale University Press)
1995: Timothy Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song (Yale University Press)
1996: Mary-Ann Constantine, Breton Ballads (CMCS Publications)
1997: Neil Jarman, Parading Culture: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Berg)
1998: Joseph Falaky Nagy, Conversing with Angels and Ancients: The Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland (Four Courts)
1999: Marina Warner, No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock (Chatto and Windus)
2000: Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork University Press)
2001: Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700 (Clarendon Press)
2002: Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture (Berg)
2003: Malcolm Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (Sutton)
2004: Steve Roud, The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland (Penguin)
2005: Jeremy Harte, Explore Fairy Traditions (Heart of Albion Press)
2006: Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press)
2007: Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick (Routledge)
2008: Richard Bebb, Welsh Furniture 1250-1950: a Cultural History of Craftsmanship and Design (Saer Books)
2009: Kathryn Marsh, The Musical Playground: Global Tradition and Change in Children's Songs and Games (Oxford University Press)
2010: Arthur Taylor, Played at the Pub: the Pub Games of Britain (English Heritage Publications)
2011: Herbert Halpert, edited by John Widdowson, Folk Tales, Trickster Tales and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey (Edwin Mellen Press)
2012: David Hopkin, Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press)
2013: Karl Bell, The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures (Boydell Press)
2014: David Atkinson, The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts (OpenBook Publishers)
2015: Richard Jenkins, Black Magic and Bogeymen (Cork University Press)
2016: Lizanne Henderson, Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670-1740 (Palgrave)
2017: Christopher Josiffe, Gef! The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose (Strange Attractor)
2018: Martin Graebe, As I Walked Out: Sabine Baring Gould and the Search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall (Signal Books)
2019: Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press)
2020: William G. Pooley, Body and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914 (Oxford University Press)
2021: Jonathan Y. H. Hui (ed. and trans.), Vilmundar saga viðutan. The Saga of Vilmundur the Outsider (Viking Society for Northern Research)
2022: Marina Montesano (ed.) Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft: Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century (Routledge)
2023: Una McIlvenna, Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 (Oxford University Press)
2024: Tabitha Stanmore, Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic (The Bodley Head).
2025: Ann Schmiesing, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography (Yale University Press)

Coote Lake Medal

The Coote Lake medal is awarded by the Committee of the Folklore Society for "outstanding research and scholarship" in the field of Folklore Studies.

The award is named in honour of Harold Coote Lake (1878-1939), an active member of the Folklore Society in the 1920s and 1930s (who served as both Treasurer and Secretary of the Society at points in that period).

The recipients have been:

1940 Mary MacLeod Banks
1941 Dr T. E. Lones
1952 Dr Walter Leo Hildburgh
1955 Professor Edward Oliver James
1960 Iona and Peter Opie
1968 Alex Helm and Enid Porter
1979 Christina Hole
1983 Theo Brown and Stewart Sanderson
1984 Ethel Rudkin and Dr Hilda Davidson
1987 Dr Emily Lyle and Dr Ian Russell
2000 Professor John Widdowson and Dr Roy Judge
2006 Dr Venetia Newall
2007 Dr Jaqueline Simpson and Dr 'Doc' Rowe
2008 Jennifer Westwood
2013 Professor Patricia Lysaght
2014 Malcolm Taylor and Dr Eddie Cass
2018 Dr Gillian Bennett and Dr Caroline Oates
2024 Steve Roud and Professor Ronald Hutton