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A Dictionary of English Folklore
With 1250 entries ranging from dragons to Mother Goose, May Day to Michaelmas, this enchanting dictionary unfurls the colorful history behind the holidays, customs, legends, and superstitious beliefs of England.
Ever wonder why we kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas or think a rabbit's foot brings good luck? Two folklore authorities provide reliable and often surprising answers to these and other curiosities that have shaped daily life in England for centuries. They explore the festivals and past
celebrations of the English calendar, from St. Andrews Day and its tradition of drunkenness and cross-dressing to Twelfth Night and its king and queen cake. They also provide concise portraits of real and legendary characters that populate the public memory, including Robin Hood, The Brothers
Grimm, Lady Godiva, Puck, and The Sandman. Fairies, mermaids, hobgoblins, and changelings are but a few of the supernatural forces surveyed here. However, as folklore encompasses the mundane as well as the fantastic, numerous other entries illuminate the significance of colors, numbers, flowers,
animals, and household objects. Learn the curious history behind our distrust of the "black sheep," popular credence in "wishbone" wishes, folk cures for nosebleeds and warts, and persistent old wives' tales. In addition to ancient and medieval folklore, you will find many contemporary urban
legends, e.g., the vanishing hitchhiker--a spooky figure seen ominously by travelers in Britain and the United States--and the Tooth Fairy.
An entertaining resource, The Dictionary of English Folklore will be a fascinating companion for readers of English literature, history, cultural studies, and fantasy.
Ever wonder why we kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas or think a rabbit's foot brings good luck? Two folklore authorities provide reliable and often surprising answers to these and other curiosities that have shaped daily life in England for centuries. They explore the festivals and past
celebrations of the English calendar, from St. Andrews Day and its tradition of drunkenness and cross-dressing to Twelfth Night and its king and queen cake. They also provide concise portraits of real and legendary characters that populate the public memory, including Robin Hood, The Brothers
Grimm, Lady Godiva, Puck, and The Sandman. Fairies, mermaids, hobgoblins, and changelings are but a few of the supernatural forces surveyed here. However, as folklore encompasses the mundane as well as the fantastic, numerous other entries illuminate the significance of colors, numbers, flowers,
animals, and household objects. Learn the curious history behind our distrust of the "black sheep," popular credence in "wishbone" wishes, folk cures for nosebleeds and warts, and persistent old wives' tales. In addition to ancient and medieval folklore, you will find many contemporary urban
legends, e.g., the vanishing hitchhiker--a spooky figure seen ominously by travelers in Britain and the United States--and the Tooth Fairy.
An entertaining resource, The Dictionary of English Folklore will be a fascinating companion for readers of English literature, history, cultural studies, and fantasy.
411 pages, Hardcover
First published July 27, 2000
6 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
About the author
Jacqueline Simpson
40 books27 followersDr. Jacqueline Simpson (born 1930) is a United Kingdom researcher and author on folklore and legend.
She studied English Literature and Medieval Icelandic at Bedford College, University of London. Dr. Simpson has been, at various times, Editor, Secretary, and President of the Folklore Society. She was awarded the Society's Coote Lake Research Medal in 2008. In 2010 she was appointed Visiting Professor of Folklore at the Sussex Centre of Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy at the University of Chichester, West Sussex. She has a particular interest in local legends (as opposed to international fairytales), and has published collections of this genre from Iceland, Scandinavia in general, and England (the latter in collaboration with the late Jennifer Westwood). She has also written on the folklore of various English regions, and was co-author with Steve Roud of the Penguin Dictionary of English Folklore. She lives in West Sussex, England.
She has been a point of reference for Terry Pratchett since he met her at a book signing in 1997. Pratchett, who was then researching his novel Carpe Jugulum, was asking everyone in the queue how many magpie rhymes they knew; and whilst most people gave one answer – the theme from the TV series Magpie – Simpson stated that she knew "about nineteen". This encounter eventually led to collaboration.
She studied English Literature and Medieval Icelandic at Bedford College, University of London. Dr. Simpson has been, at various times, Editor, Secretary, and President of the Folklore Society. She was awarded the Society's Coote Lake Research Medal in 2008. In 2010 she was appointed Visiting Professor of Folklore at the Sussex Centre of Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy at the University of Chichester, West Sussex. She has a particular interest in local legends (as opposed to international fairytales), and has published collections of this genre from Iceland, Scandinavia in general, and England (the latter in collaboration with the late Jennifer Westwood). She has also written on the folklore of various English regions, and was co-author with Steve Roud of the Penguin Dictionary of English Folklore. She lives in West Sussex, England.
She has been a point of reference for Terry Pratchett since he met her at a book signing in 1997. Pratchett, who was then researching his novel Carpe Jugulum, was asking everyone in the queue how many magpie rhymes they knew; and whilst most people gave one answer – the theme from the TV series Magpie – Simpson stated that she knew "about nineteen". This encounter eventually led to collaboration.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 8, 2014
I grew up in a small village where the locals still quoted wives tales and farming anecdotes. Where houses had their own little historical stories to tell and where old names would conjure up their own mythology and legends. And what is more when you visited the next village along the road they would have their own versions of the same stories and legends and tales.
I know some feel in this modern world there is neither space or need for such things but I disagree - apart from keeping in touch with my childhood and all its wonders I keep alive the words of my grandparents and their grandparents and theirs .... as they told tales and stories of the country around them. This book lists just a fraction of them, with links and references. It is a treasure trove of facts and details and where every detail I find and learn there are ten times more that I was not expecting which draw me further in to the book. At times it can be a little difficult to locate something specific I am looking for (I live down the road from a village called Hallaton where each Easter there is the tradition of bottle kicking - yes go look it up) and its these links in to folklore I love to learn about.
I know some feel in this modern world there is neither space or need for such things but I disagree - apart from keeping in touch with my childhood and all its wonders I keep alive the words of my grandparents and their grandparents and theirs .... as they told tales and stories of the country around them. This book lists just a fraction of them, with links and references. It is a treasure trove of facts and details and where every detail I find and learn there are ten times more that I was not expecting which draw me further in to the book. At times it can be a little difficult to locate something specific I am looking for (I live down the road from a village called Hallaton where each Easter there is the tradition of bottle kicking - yes go look it up) and its these links in to folklore I love to learn about.
January 20, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them
There are books you read with curiosity, books you read with pleasure, and books you read with a slow, dawning gratitude that such a thing even exists. Jacqueline Simpson’s The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore belongs firmly to the last category. It is not a book that seduces you with narrative momentum or emotional drama. Instead, it earns your devotion page by page, entry by entry, through its quiet authority, its humane intelligence, and its deep respect for the ordinary lives out of which folklore grows.
Revisiting it now, years after first dipping into it, I realise how profoundly it reshaped my understanding of English culture, not as something grand and monolithic, but as a dense weave of customs, beliefs, anxieties, jokes, rituals, and half-forgotten stories.
At first glance, a dictionary sounds dry, almost punitive, especially when paired with a subject as vibrant as folklore. But Simpson’s work defies that fear almost immediately. This is not a mausoleum of dead traditions. It is a living map of how English people have explained the world to themselves across centuries, often in ways that are practical, playful, fearful, and deeply imaginative.
You do not read this dictionary from A to Z. You wander through it, get lost in it, follow cross-references like footpaths through a countryside that reveals unexpected clearings.
What distinguishes Simpson from many folklorists is her resistance to romantic excess. She does not sentimentalise rural England or treat folklore as the fossilised remains of some purer past. Instead, she consistently reminds the reader that folklore is dynamic, adaptive, and often contradictory.
Customs change. Meanings shift. Practices migrate from sacred to secular and back again. A May Day ritual might begin as a fertility rite, become a village festival, decline into a school performance, and later be revived as heritage theatre. Simpson documents all this without nostalgia or disdain.
One of the great pleasures of the book is its range. Here are entries on fairies, witches, ghosts, giants, and dragons, but also on chimney sweeps, pubs, football chants, children’s games, weather lore, agricultural sayings, and calendar customs. This breadth is crucial. Folklore, Simpson shows, is not only about the supernatural. It is about how people mark time, cope with danger, explain misfortune, and negotiate social bonds. The supernatural simply dramatizes these concerns.
The entries on fairies are a good example of Simpson’s method. Rather than presenting a single, unified fairy mythology, she carefully distinguishes between regional traditions, historical periods, and social functions. Fairies are sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent, sometimes morally indifferent. They steal children, bless crops, punish arrogance, or simply exist as an explanation for the inexplicable. Simpson avoids the temptation to align English fairies neatly with later literary or Victorian interpretations. She restores their strangeness, their unpredictability, and their embeddedness in local belief.
Equally illuminating are the sections on witchcraft and magic. Simpson writes with clarity and ethical seriousness about the difference between folkloric belief and historical persecution. She acknowledges the genuine fear of malefic magic while never losing sight of how accusations of witchcraft functioned socially, especially in moments of stress, poverty, or disease. What emerges is not a caricature of ignorant villagers, but a sobering portrait of how belief systems intersect with power and vulnerability.
One of the dictionary’s quiet strengths is its attention to class. English folklore is not presented as a unified national consciousness but as something shaped by labour, geography, and social hierarchy. Agricultural customs differ from urban ones. Seafaring lore differs from inland traditions. Children’s folklore evolves independently of adult belief systems. Simpson repeatedly emphasises that folklore is often strongest where institutional authority is weakest. It flourishes in gaps: between church doctrine and lived religion, between scientific explanation and daily uncertainty.
The entries on seasonal customs are among the most rewarding. Christmas, Easter, Shrovetide, May Day, Harvest Home, and All Hallows are treated not as static festivals but as evolving clusters of practices. Simpson tracks how religious observance, pagan survivals, local invention, and commercial influence interact. The result is a deeply textured understanding of how English time has been ritualised. Reading these sections, I became acutely aware of how much meaning modern life has stripped from the calendar, and how folklore once served as a way of making time tangible.
What makes the dictionary unexpectedly moving is its accumulation of human detail. A single entry might mention a belief that cows should not be milked on a certain day, or that bread must be marked with a cross before baking, or that speaking of fairies aloud invites misfortune. None of these beliefs need be true to matter. They reveal anxiety, care, reverence, and the human need to feel aligned with unseen forces. Simpson treats such details with dignity. She neither mocks nor endorses them. She records them.
Language itself becomes a folkloric object in Simpson’s hands. Proverbs, sayings, rhymes, and charms appear throughout the book, reminding us that speech is one of folklore’s primary vehicles. Many of these expressions survive long after their original meanings have faded. To read them collected and contextualised is to feel how deeply the past murmurs beneath everyday English.
Scholarly without being forbidding, the dictionary is supported by meticulous references and cross-links. Yet Simpson never writes to impress other academics. Her prose is clear, calm, and quietly witty. She assumes the reader’s intelligence but not their prior knowledge. This generosity of tone makes the book unusually inviting. It feels less like a lecture and more like a conversation with someone who knows the terrain intimately and enjoys showing it to others.
If there is a philosophical argument running beneath the surface of the book, it is this: folklore is not a primitive error to be corrected by modernity, nor a quaint relic to be preserved behind glass. It is a mode of meaning-making that persists because it answers needs that rational systems do not fully address. Fear of death, desire for luck, anxiety about the future, hope for protection: these do not vanish with education or technology. They change their clothing.
Returning to this dictionary now, in a time when folklore is often reduced to aesthetic branding or nationalist myth-making, I am struck by how sober and resistant Simpson’s approach is. She refuses grand narratives. She resists ideological appropriation. English folklore, in her presentation, does not point toward a singular identity or destiny. It is plural, messy, often contradictory. That, perhaps, is its truest value.
Ultimately, The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore is not just a reference book. It is an education in attentiveness. It trains the reader to notice the symbolic residue in everyday life, to recognise how stories and customs linger long after belief has weakened. It reminds us that culture is not only produced by great writers and institutions, but by countless unnamed people responding creatively to the pressures of living.
As I closed the book this time, I felt not that I had mastered English folklore, but that I had been introduced to it properly at last. Simpson does not give you answers so much as orientation. She shows you where the paths are, where they intersect, and where they vanish into undergrowth. It is then up to you to walk them.
Most recommended.
There are books you read with curiosity, books you read with pleasure, and books you read with a slow, dawning gratitude that such a thing even exists. Jacqueline Simpson’s The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore belongs firmly to the last category. It is not a book that seduces you with narrative momentum or emotional drama. Instead, it earns your devotion page by page, entry by entry, through its quiet authority, its humane intelligence, and its deep respect for the ordinary lives out of which folklore grows.
Revisiting it now, years after first dipping into it, I realise how profoundly it reshaped my understanding of English culture, not as something grand and monolithic, but as a dense weave of customs, beliefs, anxieties, jokes, rituals, and half-forgotten stories.
At first glance, a dictionary sounds dry, almost punitive, especially when paired with a subject as vibrant as folklore. But Simpson’s work defies that fear almost immediately. This is not a mausoleum of dead traditions. It is a living map of how English people have explained the world to themselves across centuries, often in ways that are practical, playful, fearful, and deeply imaginative.
You do not read this dictionary from A to Z. You wander through it, get lost in it, follow cross-references like footpaths through a countryside that reveals unexpected clearings.
What distinguishes Simpson from many folklorists is her resistance to romantic excess. She does not sentimentalise rural England or treat folklore as the fossilised remains of some purer past. Instead, she consistently reminds the reader that folklore is dynamic, adaptive, and often contradictory.
Customs change. Meanings shift. Practices migrate from sacred to secular and back again. A May Day ritual might begin as a fertility rite, become a village festival, decline into a school performance, and later be revived as heritage theatre. Simpson documents all this without nostalgia or disdain.
One of the great pleasures of the book is its range. Here are entries on fairies, witches, ghosts, giants, and dragons, but also on chimney sweeps, pubs, football chants, children’s games, weather lore, agricultural sayings, and calendar customs. This breadth is crucial. Folklore, Simpson shows, is not only about the supernatural. It is about how people mark time, cope with danger, explain misfortune, and negotiate social bonds. The supernatural simply dramatizes these concerns.
The entries on fairies are a good example of Simpson’s method. Rather than presenting a single, unified fairy mythology, she carefully distinguishes between regional traditions, historical periods, and social functions. Fairies are sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent, sometimes morally indifferent. They steal children, bless crops, punish arrogance, or simply exist as an explanation for the inexplicable. Simpson avoids the temptation to align English fairies neatly with later literary or Victorian interpretations. She restores their strangeness, their unpredictability, and their embeddedness in local belief.
Equally illuminating are the sections on witchcraft and magic. Simpson writes with clarity and ethical seriousness about the difference between folkloric belief and historical persecution. She acknowledges the genuine fear of malefic magic while never losing sight of how accusations of witchcraft functioned socially, especially in moments of stress, poverty, or disease. What emerges is not a caricature of ignorant villagers, but a sobering portrait of how belief systems intersect with power and vulnerability.
One of the dictionary’s quiet strengths is its attention to class. English folklore is not presented as a unified national consciousness but as something shaped by labour, geography, and social hierarchy. Agricultural customs differ from urban ones. Seafaring lore differs from inland traditions. Children’s folklore evolves independently of adult belief systems. Simpson repeatedly emphasises that folklore is often strongest where institutional authority is weakest. It flourishes in gaps: between church doctrine and lived religion, between scientific explanation and daily uncertainty.
The entries on seasonal customs are among the most rewarding. Christmas, Easter, Shrovetide, May Day, Harvest Home, and All Hallows are treated not as static festivals but as evolving clusters of practices. Simpson tracks how religious observance, pagan survivals, local invention, and commercial influence interact. The result is a deeply textured understanding of how English time has been ritualised. Reading these sections, I became acutely aware of how much meaning modern life has stripped from the calendar, and how folklore once served as a way of making time tangible.
What makes the dictionary unexpectedly moving is its accumulation of human detail. A single entry might mention a belief that cows should not be milked on a certain day, or that bread must be marked with a cross before baking, or that speaking of fairies aloud invites misfortune. None of these beliefs need be true to matter. They reveal anxiety, care, reverence, and the human need to feel aligned with unseen forces. Simpson treats such details with dignity. She neither mocks nor endorses them. She records them.
Language itself becomes a folkloric object in Simpson’s hands. Proverbs, sayings, rhymes, and charms appear throughout the book, reminding us that speech is one of folklore’s primary vehicles. Many of these expressions survive long after their original meanings have faded. To read them collected and contextualised is to feel how deeply the past murmurs beneath everyday English.
Scholarly without being forbidding, the dictionary is supported by meticulous references and cross-links. Yet Simpson never writes to impress other academics. Her prose is clear, calm, and quietly witty. She assumes the reader’s intelligence but not their prior knowledge. This generosity of tone makes the book unusually inviting. It feels less like a lecture and more like a conversation with someone who knows the terrain intimately and enjoys showing it to others.
If there is a philosophical argument running beneath the surface of the book, it is this: folklore is not a primitive error to be corrected by modernity, nor a quaint relic to be preserved behind glass. It is a mode of meaning-making that persists because it answers needs that rational systems do not fully address. Fear of death, desire for luck, anxiety about the future, hope for protection: these do not vanish with education or technology. They change their clothing.
Returning to this dictionary now, in a time when folklore is often reduced to aesthetic branding or nationalist myth-making, I am struck by how sober and resistant Simpson’s approach is. She refuses grand narratives. She resists ideological appropriation. English folklore, in her presentation, does not point toward a singular identity or destiny. It is plural, messy, often contradictory. That, perhaps, is its truest value.
Ultimately, The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore is not just a reference book. It is an education in attentiveness. It trains the reader to notice the symbolic residue in everyday life, to recognise how stories and customs linger long after belief has weakened. It reminds us that culture is not only produced by great writers and institutions, but by countless unnamed people responding creatively to the pressures of living.
As I closed the book this time, I felt not that I had mastered English folklore, but that I had been introduced to it properly at last. Simpson does not give you answers so much as orientation. She shows you where the paths are, where they intersect, and where they vanish into undergrowth. It is then up to you to walk them.
Most recommended.
March 22, 2011
For me the best reference books are those which not only provide a entry matching your initial query but which also encourage you to browse and read other not always related entries. This Dictionary does it for me on both counts: authoritiveness and readability. Folklore here is rightly interpreted as including aspects of modern popular culture as well as topics beloved of antiquarians.
Authored by two stalwarts of the Folklore Society--who should then know what they are talking about--the Dictionary contains over 1250 entries covering a wide range of topics including seasonal customs, traditional tales, superstitions and beliefs. Key figures involved in the recording of lore are noted here, and evidence presented that folklore is part of a continually evolving process. What makes this book particularly worthwhile is that not all so-called traditional lore is accorded uncritical acceptance.
For those wanting more there are relevant references and a bibliography, and in common with many in this Oxford reference series, pretty pictures are excluded in favour of more text.
Authored by two stalwarts of the Folklore Society--who should then know what they are talking about--the Dictionary contains over 1250 entries covering a wide range of topics including seasonal customs, traditional tales, superstitions and beliefs. Key figures involved in the recording of lore are noted here, and evidence presented that folklore is part of a continually evolving process. What makes this book particularly worthwhile is that not all so-called traditional lore is accorded uncritical acceptance.
For those wanting more there are relevant references and a bibliography, and in common with many in this Oxford reference series, pretty pictures are excluded in favour of more text.
January 20, 2016
Certainly a great source of reference for those with interest in Folklore. Not just English, the authors have also provided links to British and European lore, where applicable.
As a dictionary/reference book it is not something that is read cover to cover, but I have browsed through the alphabetical chapters over a few days, picking out my points of interest. Over four hundred pages from Abbots Bromley Horn Dance to Yule.
For the sceptics who scoff at the reader...there are cures for earache. Popular tradition lays particular stress on the efficacy of raw onion rubbed on wasp and bee stings, and on warm onion juice dropped into the ear for earache. Failing that, snails are recommended for earache. Prick with a needle and drip the juice into the ear.
Who needs the National Health Service?
As a dictionary/reference book it is not something that is read cover to cover, but I have browsed through the alphabetical chapters over a few days, picking out my points of interest. Over four hundred pages from Abbots Bromley Horn Dance to Yule.
For the sceptics who scoff at the reader...there are cures for earache. Popular tradition lays particular stress on the efficacy of raw onion rubbed on wasp and bee stings, and on warm onion juice dropped into the ear for earache. Failing that, snails are recommended for earache. Prick with a needle and drip the juice into the ear.
Who needs the National Health Service?
April 18, 2011
Interesting to browse, but the areas I know something about I felt were very basically explained, as if for children or slow adults, so although I learned some new things it was overall rather unsatisfying.
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November 1, 2022
[ to review at a later date - possibly even re-read at a later date as well, though not urgent ]
April 21, 2015
Another great resource.
Read
February 21, 2012A dictionary of English folklore by Jacqueline Simpson (2003), Reissued with new covers
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews