Folklore

How would you be defining that yourself, Jim? I the sense of Popular Antiquities or the ongoing responses of an observable collectivity? The former sense is quaint; the latter somewhat less so, but no less engaging, as it deals with an ongoing folkloric process and the reasons thereof, rather than any romanticism as such, Frazerian or otherwise.



I grew up in the colliery villages of SE Northumberland; I was very familiar with rapper, and delight in the dancers who have invaded recent sessions and singarounds in Preston and Byker. I don't dance myself, but have played pipe & tabor for the odd morris side in my time. Truth to tell, I have no real feelings on this - I like it when I see it; as do most people, and I'm hearted that people do it, for whatever reason. If I go to the 5000 Morris Dancers thread I see that I once wrote RVW was a reactionary fantasist too, his words woefully out of step even by the standards of his time, let alone the England of some 50 years after his death (almost to the day). This is the England in which we live, a complex multi-ethnic & multi-cultural England in which morris dancing & folk singing are minority hobbies with a good deal less cultural currency to actual English folk as (say) line-dancing & karaoke. I guess I still still that way.   

   
Folktales

As as professional storyteller myself I have a vested interest in this. Out of choice I tell only what I call Traditional Folk-Tales - which is to say those stories found in the collections of The Brothers Grimm, Asbjorsen and Moe, John Sampson, Samuel Lover, Crofton Croker, etc etc, as well as stories I've been given by Traditional Storytellers I've been fortunate to work with (such as Duncan Williamson), and from other storytellers at work in the field of the Storytelling Revival. You may view my on-line CV Here.

My feeling is that the morphology of folk-tales is in part determined by the same psycho-biological subroutines that determine linguistic structure; this is one of of the reasons we get folk-tales o'er leaping linguistic boundaries. One of my first Mudcat threads was to do with precisely that very phenomenon, and whether or not the same thing was true of folk song. See Folklore: Analogues Across Linguistic Frontiers. I must stress, however, that my interest in Folk-Tale is vocational, not academic, but my concerns with the phenomenon of traditional narrative - both sung and spoken - are something of a lifelong passion.

I could go on - perhaps on another thread if you've a mind for it, but from your reactions hitherto I very much doubt it.

folk customs

Where does one start? I guess we're in a similar territory to Folklore here, with regard to observation & interpretation and Frazerian fantasies of menacing overtones of pagan ritual etc. so at times it's difficult to get a handle on any of it other than to sit back and enjoy, which I do - be it the Bury Man of South Queensferry or the Penny Hedge at Whitby. I love Bob Pegg's book Rites and Riots; makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, here's my own wee film of the Cheese Rolling in Chester; do have a look at some of the comments though, it's a hoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993m0yRR0bg   

folk music

Well, I'm afraid I'm with Louis Armstrong on this one, Jim - though I do allow for Traditional Music, though I don't have too much to do with it personally; I play a few whistle tunes, a bit of pipe & tabor and I even play Jew's Harp in sessions from time to time. I love a lot of the old players - Seamus Ennis (who I regard as a fine singer & storyteller too), Felix Doran, Tom Clough, Billy Pigg, etc. etc. who seem to represent something very different to what happens today, though there are musicians today whose playing I love dearly.