19th century Folklore as a science

[waif]

I have recently completed a postgraduate dissertation focussing on the beginning of the Folklore Society in England and their study of fairies, especially how folklore was considered a nineteenth century science.
I am looking to continue my research and just thought this topic might be of interest to this community. Just wondering if there was anyone out there who might be interested or who has done some similar research?

[The Governess]

that sounds very interesting!

I've not done research per se, but have a massive interest in mythology and folklore. I've read a fair bit of stuff, and my fiction writings have strong myth/ folklore leanings, which I tend to look things up for.

Folklore as a science I've not really considered. I know about the Cottingley fairies, for example, but I'm suspecting that you're going beyond this. Tell me more!

[waif]

Well, in short a few academics in the 19th century were convinced that myths passed down orally, usually in rural populations survived, but were dying off because of the influence of industrialisation. They set about collecting these bits of folklore as "survivals".  They attempted to place these stories in a context of a museum like categorised setting, think butterfly boards and big collectors cabinets. This categorisation was a major facet of folklore as a science, a regulated method of collecting stories and attempts to study and trace patterns of stories and oral traditions in a contextualised setting. They also attempted to rationalise fairy tales and myths in accordance with the new scientific age. So fairies became the oral memory of pre-historic people, that lived in neolithic burial mounds, or the visions of people who had taken hallucination inducing herbs.
A wonderful book to begin with is the Science of Fairy Tales by Hartland, he traces many European myths and traditions and parallels them. 

[The Governess]

Thanks for the reference; that's going on the shopping list.

I've seen classification of, eg, Mummers plays, etc, strikes me that this could be the latest incarnation of this idea...?

[waif]

All part of the same field, id imagine. I would like to look into Mummers plays. I seen  aspects of folk dance and song  categorised by the Victorian folklorists also.

[The Governess]

I also do historical interpretation for the other half's business, so we sometimes have to research and perform traditional plays, etc. I'm also hoping to do a Masters in history later this year- wonder if this might also relate into my dissertation, given my interests!

It's certainly food for thought... 

[darkshines]

I'm struggling with the language you are using. Do you mean strictly Fortean phenomena like crytozoology, magic, esoterica etc, or scientific phenomena (or what was regarded as scientific) like alchemy, psychic happenings, metaphysics etc? It is important to remember that in the early Victorian times, science and the ccult were still very deeply entwined, and the fields of physics, chemistry and biology were only just becoming concrete. Nowadays anything that doesnt fit into one of those boxes is regarded as something outside science (by mainstream academics) but to the Victorians even quite finge outlandish phenomena were considered science.

I wrote a chapter of my Masters dissertation on how Victorian scientists dealt with Mesmerism (specifically) but I might have some good quotes about proof, existence and scietific fact, if you want. I have an excellant book edited by Laura Otis called Literature and Science in the Nineteeth Century that you may find useful, it has chapters on things like Experimental Medicine, Evolution, Mesmerism, and Degeneration. These are generally speaking outmoded forms of science in our age, and although may not be directly linked to your subjects of fairys and goblins, again they may lend some excellant quotes about truth and belief.

PM me if you would like any further help

[waif]

That is really interesting. I'm dealing with late Victorians. I am referring partially to the 'scientific phenomena'. Mainly, I'm looking at Folklore, on the ground researching oral traditions and stories, then the 'scientific treatment' of these collections. I've come from the stance that that particular field was part of a wider culture of Victorian scientific approaches to subjects we would consider more supernatural.
What was your thesis on? It sounds very interesting. Have you read the works of Andrew Lang on psychical phenomena?

[Khem Caigan]

Just wondering if there was anyone out there who might be interested or who has done some similar research?

Yes, I have - here are a few texts along these lines,
most freely available for download from GoogleBooks,
and including the work of Mr. Hartland:


The Science of Fairy Tales:
An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology
by Edwin Sidney Hartland
(Read/Download @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/23g5jlt

The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
by Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz
(Read/Download @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/29e7s7s

The Testimony of Tradition
by David MacRitchie
(Read/Download @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/259vpda

Fians, Fairies, and Picts
by David MacRitchie
(Read/Download @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/2cv5rrn

The Fians:
or,
Stories, Poems, & Traditions of Fionn
and His Warrior Band
by John Gregorson Campbell
(Read/Download @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/23wdoj2

Motif-Index of Folk-Literature:
A Classification of Narrative
Elements in Folktales, Ballads,
Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances,
Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and
Local Legends, Volume Six,
by Stith Thompson
(Preview @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/2crja4l

And, more recently:

Between One Eye Blink and the Next:
Fairies, UFOs, and Problems of Knowledge
by Peter M. Rojcewicz, page 479.

~ in ~

The Good People: New Fairylore Essays
Edited by Peter Narvaez
(Preview @GoogleBooks)
http://tinyurl.com/2bn7y9h


I hope that you will visit with us one day soon
at the Esoteric Order of the Brazen Dawn,
over in the Meta-Clubs Section here at Brass
Goggles!

[darkshines]

That is really interesting. I'm dealing with late Victorians. I am referring partially to the 'scientific phenomena'. Mainly, I'm looking at Folklore, on the ground researching oral traditions and stories, then the 'scientific treatment' of these collections. I've come from the stance that that particular field was part of a wider culture of Victorian scientific approaches to subjects we would consider more supernatural.
What was your thesis on? It sounds very interesting. Have you read the works of Andrew Lang on psychical phenomena?

My dissertation was solely on Victorian in Mesmerism in reality and through literature, and my chapters were on Science and Medicine, Transcedualism and Mesmerism as Villainy. I got a high Merit for it

[waif]

Well done. Nice to see so many steampunk academics in the fold. That sounds a really great area of research. The literary approach is always really good when looking at these topics. I took the historiographical approach myself. It is always great to see how similar conclusions can be reached by looking at things from different angles.

[darkshines]

I found it interesting that reality and fiction rarely added up. For example, in literature, in every single example I studied, the person being mesmerised died during the course of the narrative (and in the case of Trilby the mesmerist, Svengali, died too). However, in real life, people rarely, if ever, died as a result of being mesmerised although strange after effects were commonly reported.

If you are studying folklore and it's application in science, it might be good to see when fictional accounts are written compared to when real accounts are reported. For example, an academic also in my field is currently studying werewolf fiction versus folklore. His main area of interest at the moment is how accounts of wild dogs and werewolf activity shot up after the publication of The Hound of the Baskervilles, even in built up urban areas such as the middle of London! He gave an excellant lecture a couple of years ago about fantastical canines, if I can find my old conference notes, I can give you his name and contact details.

[waif]

That is interesting. I find that sometimes there is an interesting blur between literature and folklore. The folklorists I looked at always questioned how literature seeped into folk-culture and how folk-culture seeped into literature. But in the main there is a very clear distinction between folkloric  and literary tropes and imagery.
Werewolves sound interesting, so much influence from classical lycanthropy traditions can be traced into the themes of ancient Greek and Roman wolves.

[The Governess]

Just wondering if there was anyone out there who might be interested or who has done some similar research?

Yes, I have - here are a few texts along these lines,
most freely available for download from GoogleBooks,
and including the work of Mr. Hartland:

That's a great list, thanks for sharing, sir.

[Miles (a sailor)Martin]

Are you concentrating on euro-centric myths and legends or are you going world wide?  one that I thought was a good source was "Yaqui Gold and Apache Silver ' for  southwestern US and Northern Mexico Legends of lost mines and treasure caravans. must have read it 8 or ten times out of my school library when i was 12 to 15 years of age really good,and somewat on the border of fiction/non-fiction, some of the events in the book  are documented facts according to spanish colonial records, especially the Naranjo mine story. ...a cool startfor steampunk story could be some one who figures out where the town was, the things that stuck in my memory about it were three points :
1 the river that ran through the town and carried the oranges downstream  when in season .
2 the bells that you could here for 15 miles aka two days journy and were cast on site from a bronze-silver alloy that all material were mined in the same valley .
3 the gold nuggets the size of the oranges that were found in the mine .

  i always wanted to go hunting but never had the time ,or balls to just take off and do it and now it would be far to dangerous to try. ah well maybe next reincarnation.

                                                Miles

[Danbury Shakes]

Reading this thread so far would give the impression that folklore = myths & legends


But if we take folklore to mean the knowledge of a people passed on through beliefs, traditions and oral passages then the meaning of folklore expands to cover nore areas, including old wives tales.  Lets look at some old wives tales

1) If you've had cow pox hen you won't get small pox
2) Bread Mould will cure an infection
3) Chewing willow bark will get rid of toothache/headache

so the science bit would be

1) Edward Jenner (immunisation)
2) Alexander Fleming (penicillin)
3) Johann Buchner (Salicin)


you can also include knowledge bearing phrases such as

Red sky at night - shepherds delight
Red Sky at morning, shepherds warning

or

Many a mickle makes a muckle

[waif]

Folklore in the nineteenth century was certainly considered in this manner. The folklorists took it upon themselves to collect, all areas of oral traditions, including old wives tales. The science part come in where folklorists attempted to study HOW these stories were passed down, which era an oral tradition derived from and the geographical correlations between certain similar beliefs.

We also get another strand where the Victorians, who as we all know believed that history was constantly progressing, saw these 'old wives tales' as remnants of an ancient culture. In this vein of thought they used folklore to back up archaeology and attempt to recreate pre-history. This school of folklore was called 'Survivalist', they believed all these oral wives tales were survivals.

As for our intrepid Victorian Adventurers they went out to explore and found 'primitive  tribes'. These tribes were seen as less developed in the linear culture, folklore was also linked to these ancient tribal traditions.

These ideas survived into the 20th century with the works of a notorious Margaret Murray. A reading of her God of the Witches is quite fun. Or if you are very brave trying to read her first book the Witch-Cult in western europe..... but that book is a tough read.