In Search of Lost Gods: A Guide to British Folklore

by Ralph Whitlock

The sight of people performing actions that seem superficially strange prompts an inquiry into not only what they are doing but why. In the context of folklore the participants often do not know the answer. They are repeating a ritual inherited from generations of ancestors, and often the explanations they give are decidedly garbled. By probing deep, however, it is usually possible to discover some grain of logic behind what may seem to be absurd behviour or belief.Civilization tends to be a rather thin veneer concealing a mass of primitive instincts and atavistic memories. Christianity is one of a succession of religions in which men have sought for an explanation of the mysteries of life and death. Arriving comparatively late in historfy, it grafted its basic tenets on age-old beliefs and customs which were too powerful to eradicate.A student of folklore encounters a number of strata of religious beliefs and practices, associated with a succession of invaders (Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Romans, Celts), all overlying a basic animism. A constant figure in ancient mythology was the Earth Mother, still remembered in the Corn Goddess or Kern Baby, whose image in straw is fashioned to celebrate the climax of harvest. The celebration of Samhain, when the Otherworld becomes temporarily entangled with our own, survives in Hallowe'en, though Christianized as All Saint's Day and with its liveliest features, notably bonfires, dispersed over the calendar. The Horn Dance, still performed at Abbots Bromley, the West Country legends of fairies and pixies, the mumming plays and the Morris dancers, and dim recollections of initiation rites into secret orders, as at the Weyhill Horn Supper, take us back to primeval days.In this book, the distinguished author of a number of volumes on folklore, surveying the field, attempts to inspire readers to look further for themselves, confident that they will arrive at a deeper undestanding of human behaviour.

Genres: Nonfiction, Folklore

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1979

Reviews

[Han Adcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can tell by the tone and sentence structure of this book that it was written in the seventies by a very English person, which added to its interest from my point of view. The book is well researched, covering everything from the old customs and traditions of places in England (e.g. Morris Dancing, Mumming Plays, and superstitions to do with weddings, death and witches) to sacred natural haunts such as Stonehenge and the embarrassingly well-hung, deranged hill figure of the Cerne Abbas Giant, and there is even a section at the back describing old playground games and their roots in ancient pagan religion. Most of the terms mentioned in the book are explained at some point or another, e.g. Ralph Whitlock does tell the reader about the Celtic gods (the Dagda, Epona, etc) but in some instances he seems to treat some of the names of old gods and festivals as self-explanatory, for example, who exactly was the Celtic god Robin-a-Bobbin, the big bellied Ben? What is the festival of Corpus Christi?
However, as the author points out at the start of the work, the book isn't supposed to be exhaustive, more of a starting point to whet your appetite. And it has worked. I wonder if anybody has found anything out about the old festival of Imbolc, or of Lady Day?

[Cam]

wonderful little book i read when i was 8 years old. it was kicking around my grandparents' attic. they're both long dead, the house long sold, and i wonder where i shall ever find a copy