It’s been hard to miss the wave of representations of folkloric tales and practice in popular media in recent years – think folk horror movies like Hereditary, Midsommar and The Ritual on the big screen, or The League of Gentlemen, the Detectorists and Small Prophets on the small screen.
This has been accompanied by thriving online folk communities, many aimed at gen Z, exploring urban legends, spell-making and paganism, and offline a surge in people actively participating in seasonal calendar customs. There’s the Mari Lwyd local to south Wales, a ghastly skeletal hobby horse who travels around people’s houses in midwinter with a group of wassailers to scare and entertain, and Whuppity Scoorie, a children’s spring festival in Lanark, first documented in the 1890s. And with renewed interest comes an expanded community: Jack in the Green, the annual May Day skirmish in Hastings, has included a LGBTQI+ troupe for 30 years.
Folklorists tracking this revival wanted to learn more, resulting in the National Folklore Survey for England, coordinated by the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University. An ambitious two-year undertaking, which draws to a close in December, it is based around a snapshot study of almost 2,000 participants and provides the most comprehensive picture of contemporary folk culture in England to date.
Dr Diane A Rodgers, the project co-lead, and researcher Dr Sophie Parkes-Nield are still collating their embarrassment of data, but some fascinating trends have already emerged. These include the prevalence of beliefs (one-third of respondents believe that ghosts exist) and that younger age-groups were twice as likely to believe in conspiracy theories, demons and curses as older respondents. There’s also the intergenerational reach of contemporary legends: nearly half of 16- to 24-year-olds believe that Diana, Princess of Wales was murdered as a result of a conspiracy, despite not being born when she died in 1997.
The results also reveal how folkloric practice is woven into everyday life. I’m not alone in my acknowledgment of magpies: 51% do something similar, whether that’s saluting, speaking or spitting.
What is folklore?
“Do you say something when you see a magpie? Do you pick a penny off the pavement? Do you touch wood when you want something to happen?” Rodgers asks me. Absolutely everyone has folklore, she believes, and we see it in small ways every single day: “whether it’s the Christmas pudding recipe annotated by your great-grandma that you make every year, or pupils signing each other’s shirts at the end of the school term”.
A lot of us don’t realise we’re participating in folklore, says Parkes-Nield. “If you blow out candles on a birthday cake, if you take part in the ritualised behaviour involved in a stag or hen do, all of those things are folkloric”.
In essence, folklore is the practices, traditions and stories people share together. It encompasses crafts, dance, songs, tales, beliefs. And it usually has an element of received knowledge passed from one generation to the next, and that evolves by word of mouth rather than formalised means.
Folklore is sometimes best explained by what it’s not: not purely historical, not only the paranormal, not just middle-aged white men morris dancing around isolated villages where incomers face ritual immolation.
Indeed, morris dancing is a fine example of the more inclusive aspect of the folk revival: once exclusively male, there are now as many female dancers as men, with the growth of queer and feminist troupes like Boss Morris, who have performed with Wet Leg at the Brit Awards and Glastonbury.
Why are younger people so engaged in folklore?
Folklore can be very analogue, says Parkes-Nield. It’s tangible and, particularly in a post-pandemic world, a way to meet the people on your doorstep – whether it is learning a heritage craft like wheat-weaving, editing a fanzine or visiting local standing stones with other curious neighbours.
And, while folklore absolutely proliferates through digital means – look up WitchTok or #pagan on your social media of choice – it also offers a way of getting offline and meeting people across generations, in a time when so much entertainment is segregated and screen-based.
All of this has pretty obvious positive effects for mental health, as young people in particular struggle in an increasingly disconnected world. And it satisfies a craving for spiritual exploration that extends beyond organised religion – according to recent census data shamanism is the fastest growing belief system in the UK.
In her research, Parkes-Nield sees folklore societies popping up all over the shop – one such is Folk Club, based in south London and set up four years ago by Ellie Dempsey and Elizabeth Bailey. Now in her early 30s, Bailey grew up in the countryside, but didn’t really consider the folk rituals that were part of her childhood until she moved to the capital.
The escalating climate emergency is without doubt tied to the current resurgence, she thinks. “Folklore often sees a revival at points of national crisis, because it’s so much about coming together and connecting with the natural world.”
But, while Bailey also notes an appetite for learning about the seasonal traditions that were once passed down organically, the pull is not backwards. “A big part of the folk revival is that folk is by the people, for the people. That means re-examining some practices, making them more inclusive, and taking the opportunity to update traditions that have stagnated or been co-opted.”
She also draws a direct line between the political roots of folklore and this current iteration, like the Right to Roam protesters summoning Old Crockern, the mythical guardian spirit of Dartmoor, or Extinction Rebellion crowds banging pots and pans. “This is folklore being created.”
Folklore as resistance
The folklore revival has been greeted with scepticism in some quarters, wary of the potential for co-option for a more nationalist or far-right agenda. The academics and practitioners I spoke to are well aware of how “Englishness” has become contentious in recent years, in particular the aggressive use of the St George’s flag by anti-immigrant activists.
But they argue these customs are far from nationalistic – many happen on a more hyperlocal scale than national. Folklore is often historically anti-establishment, and its practices at times suppressed with the same force and misogyny directed towards women accused of witchcraft. There are plenty of calendar customs, for example, cancelled by the establishment because of what was considered to be riotous behaviour by the lower classes. And many traditions were founded by communities wanting to celebrate themselves beyond the dominant culture: the Notting Hill carnival is perhaps the best-known example of this.
Academics talk about “multifolkloric Britain”, says Rodgers. “We can’t track where certain elements of folklore come from because we’ve always had people arriving and leaving, bringing and taking away things. So folklore is naturally diverse and inclusive.”
But the current revival is offering a moment of correction. She quotes the writer David Southwell, creator of the folkloric fantasy Hookland, who argues: “Re-enchantment is resistance”.
This otherworldly image of Boss Morris is brimming with folkloric symbolism. Photograph: Hollie Fernando
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