FOLK-LORE.
Bartholomew Tide.
I do not know that I can better show my gratitude for the insertion in last Saturday’s Athenæum of my letter inviting you to receive, and your country readers to furnish, communications on the subject of our ‘Folk-Lore,’ than by indicating to “intending” correspondents some points connected with our Popular Mythology and Observances, respecting which new facts and existing traditions might prove of considerable value.
I would observe, in the first place, that, as the Fairy Mythology of England, as preserved to us in the writings of Shakspeare (its best and most beautiful expositor), exhibits a striking intermixture of Celtic and Teutonic elements, all local traditions respecting that mystic race,—whether
Of elves, of hills, brooks, standing lakes, or groves,—
will be useful in developing the influence which such elements respectively exercised upon this poetical branch of our Popular Mythology. And as I agree with Mr. Keightley—no mean authority on such a subject–in opinion “that the belief in Fairies is by no means extinct in England,—and that in districts, if there be any such, where steam-engines, cotton mills, mail coaches,[1] and similar exorcists have not yet penetrated, numerous legends might be collected,”—I am not without hope of seeing many “a roundel and a fairy song” rescued from destruction through the agency of the Athenæum.
Can no Devonshire correspondent furnish new and untold stories of his native Pixies? Are there no records of a fairy pipe manufactory to be gathered at Swinborne in Worcestershire?—In the mining and mountainous districts of Derbyshire are all “such antique fables and such fairy toys” entirely extinct?—If so, is not the neighbourhood of Haddon, or of Hardwicke, or of both, still visited by the coach drawn by headless steeds, driven by a coachman as headless as themselves?—Does not such an equipage still haunt the mansion of Parsloes, in Essex?—and could not some correspondent from that county furnish you with stories of the inhabitants of Coggeshall, to prove them very rivals of the Wise Men of Gotham?—Is the Barguest no longer seen in Yorkshire?—Is “howdening” altogether obsolete in Kent—and, if so, when was this last trace of a heathen rite performed?—Are the legends of Tregeagle no longer current in Cornwall?—These are all subjects not undeserving attention: and it should be remembered that legends, and traditions which are considered trifling, in the localities to which they more immediately relate, assume an interest in the eyes of strangers to whom they are not familiar—and an importance when placed in apposition with cognate materials, by the light which they both receive and furnish from such juxtaposition.
There is another matter, too, on which local information is much to be desired while it is still attainable. I mean the “Feasts” which are still annually celebrated in the more remote parts of the country; many of which are, doubtless, of very considerable antiquity—even as old as the days of Heathenism. This is a branch of our Popular Antiquities which—to use a happy phrase of Horace Walpole’s—has not yet been “tapped” in England; one which can now be thoroughly and properly investigated only by ascertaining, in each case, the following particulars, among others:—the day on which
- ↑ This was written, by Mr. Keightley, in 1828; but now, what Chaucer said of the “elves” may almost be applied to the mails—“But now can no man see non mails mo.”
