TITLE: The Watkins Book of English Folktales
AUTHOR: Neil Philip
PUBLISHER: Watkins
ISBN: 978-1786787095
PODCAST EPISODE: Episode 121
REVIEWER: Jenny Barrett
First published in 1992 as The Penguin Book of English Folktales, The Watkins Book of English Folktales draws together over a hundred carefully selected renditions of folktales both familiar and rare, diligently researched by the highly esteemed folklorist, author and poet, Neil Philip.
Praise has come from admired figures across the world of folklore and fairy tales, such as Marina Warner, Jack Zipes and Philip Pullman, and includes terms such as ‘treasure trove’ and ‘overflowing cauldron.’ David Southwell of Hookland fame, part of a current generation of writers involved in a ‘rewilding of the English folktale,’ as Philip calls it, describes the earlier version of the book a ‘profound influence.’ Neil Gaiman’s foreword comments on the transformative effect Philip’s book had on him, writing ‘I read the Snow-White story, with three robbers instead of seven dwarfs, and it changed the inside of my head.’ Indeed, the tales told here may just change the way you see stories you thought you already knew.
For those who admire Philip’s work, such as The Tale of Sir Gawain (1987) or any number of collections of Celtic, Scottish, Greek and North American myths and folktales, you will already know of his expansive knowledge and voracious appetite for archival research. His is an incredible talent for re-presenting myths and tales from around the world with an energy and vibrancy that makes them seem new to the reader. In this collection we find the bare bones of cherished tales such as ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’ ‘Snow-White’ and ‘The Story of the Little Three Pigs.’ The tellers are farmers, Gypsies and Travellers, vagrants, housemaids, mothers and more, with strong themes of fortune-seeking, pranks, curses and trials, the fodder of English oral storytelling traditions.
The collection begins with ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’ which Philip calls ‘the quintessential English folktale,’ along with a host of other ‘Jack’ tales. As one young storyteller is said to have claimed, ‘the best man in the story is always called Jack,’ the young man or boy who steals golden geese, kills ogres and saves princesses in so many of the tales collected.
Each story is followed by contextual and critical notes, where Philip often draws attention to any unique or regional ‘voices’ that have brought character to more hackneyed literary versions of the past. References to other significant works from Katharine Briggs, Joseph Jacobs and the Gypsy folklorist, Thomas William Thompson are regularly made. Philip traces versions of the tales known to exist and explores where they meet or depart. However, although he may note apparent similarities to stories such as ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ or ‘La Belle et la Bête,’ his intent is less to trace these associations and more to present the tales in pithy incarnations that draw the oral storyteller to mind.
The sheer breadth of the selection ensures that there truly is something here for everyone. Hare and witch stories, such as ‘The Witch Hare’ and ‘Watching for the Milk Stealer,’ drew my attention as a self-confessed enthusiast of hare-related tales. As Philip notes, there are thirteen other versions of the former story in Katharine Briggs A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language (1970-1, recommended in Philip’s ‘Further Reading’), where the farmer’s pest is shot with a silver bullet, tracked and found to be a witch with a wounded leg. Philip’s version, hailing from Yorkshire and published in J.C. Atkinson’s Forty Years in a Moorland Parish (1891), has a regional tone to it that evokes the storyteller. Read alongside the relevant chapters in books such as George Ewart Evans’ and David Thomson’s The Leaping Hare (1972) or Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson’s The Lore of the Land (2005, another recommendation in Philip’s ‘Further Reading’), one can discover yet more versions and glean the tales’ rich cultural references, such as the link between hares and silver through their shared association with the moon.
The introduction is itself as worthy as the stories that follow: an essay that presents us with a bounty of nineteenth century and early twentieth century folktale collections that would make any folklore enthusiast drool, many out of print or which exist only in paper archives (some thankfully accessible in digitized copy, such as the resources available online via the Internet Archive). The introduction reproduces an extensive list of ‘supernatural beings’ from The Denham Tracts (1892-5) which includes shellycoats, redcaps, kitty-witches, puckles and dozens more – including hobbits, one should add, recorded by M.A. Denham as folktale characters a good forty or so years before Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937.
Any newer readers who have found themselves of late drawn to Zoe Gilbert’s uncanny and compelling Folk (2018) or Edward Parnell’s reflective Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (2019) will find much reward by digging into this abundant resource. One must acknowledge, however, its function as a reference book and source for writers and folklorists, who will all appreciate this treasure on the shelf.
AUTHOR: Neil Philip
PUBLISHER: Watkins
ISBN: 978-1786787095
PODCAST EPISODE: Episode 121
REVIEWER: Jenny Barrett
First published in 1992 as The Penguin Book of English Folktales, The Watkins Book of English Folktales draws together over a hundred carefully selected renditions of folktales both familiar and rare, diligently researched by the highly esteemed folklorist, author and poet, Neil Philip.
Praise has come from admired figures across the world of folklore and fairy tales, such as Marina Warner, Jack Zipes and Philip Pullman, and includes terms such as ‘treasure trove’ and ‘overflowing cauldron.’ David Southwell of Hookland fame, part of a current generation of writers involved in a ‘rewilding of the English folktale,’ as Philip calls it, describes the earlier version of the book a ‘profound influence.’ Neil Gaiman’s foreword comments on the transformative effect Philip’s book had on him, writing ‘I read the Snow-White story, with three robbers instead of seven dwarfs, and it changed the inside of my head.’ Indeed, the tales told here may just change the way you see stories you thought you already knew.
For those who admire Philip’s work, such as The Tale of Sir Gawain (1987) or any number of collections of Celtic, Scottish, Greek and North American myths and folktales, you will already know of his expansive knowledge and voracious appetite for archival research. His is an incredible talent for re-presenting myths and tales from around the world with an energy and vibrancy that makes them seem new to the reader. In this collection we find the bare bones of cherished tales such as ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’ ‘Snow-White’ and ‘The Story of the Little Three Pigs.’ The tellers are farmers, Gypsies and Travellers, vagrants, housemaids, mothers and more, with strong themes of fortune-seeking, pranks, curses and trials, the fodder of English oral storytelling traditions.
The collection begins with ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’ which Philip calls ‘the quintessential English folktale,’ along with a host of other ‘Jack’ tales. As one young storyteller is said to have claimed, ‘the best man in the story is always called Jack,’ the young man or boy who steals golden geese, kills ogres and saves princesses in so many of the tales collected.
Each story is followed by contextual and critical notes, where Philip often draws attention to any unique or regional ‘voices’ that have brought character to more hackneyed literary versions of the past. References to other significant works from Katharine Briggs, Joseph Jacobs and the Gypsy folklorist, Thomas William Thompson are regularly made. Philip traces versions of the tales known to exist and explores where they meet or depart. However, although he may note apparent similarities to stories such as ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ or ‘La Belle et la Bête,’ his intent is less to trace these associations and more to present the tales in pithy incarnations that draw the oral storyteller to mind.
The sheer breadth of the selection ensures that there truly is something here for everyone. Hare and witch stories, such as ‘The Witch Hare’ and ‘Watching for the Milk Stealer,’ drew my attention as a self-confessed enthusiast of hare-related tales. As Philip notes, there are thirteen other versions of the former story in Katharine Briggs A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language (1970-1, recommended in Philip’s ‘Further Reading’), where the farmer’s pest is shot with a silver bullet, tracked and found to be a witch with a wounded leg. Philip’s version, hailing from Yorkshire and published in J.C. Atkinson’s Forty Years in a Moorland Parish (1891), has a regional tone to it that evokes the storyteller. Read alongside the relevant chapters in books such as George Ewart Evans’ and David Thomson’s The Leaping Hare (1972) or Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson’s The Lore of the Land (2005, another recommendation in Philip’s ‘Further Reading’), one can discover yet more versions and glean the tales’ rich cultural references, such as the link between hares and silver through their shared association with the moon.
The introduction is itself as worthy as the stories that follow: an essay that presents us with a bounty of nineteenth century and early twentieth century folktale collections that would make any folklore enthusiast drool, many out of print or which exist only in paper archives (some thankfully accessible in digitized copy, such as the resources available online via the Internet Archive). The introduction reproduces an extensive list of ‘supernatural beings’ from The Denham Tracts (1892-5) which includes shellycoats, redcaps, kitty-witches, puckles and dozens more – including hobbits, one should add, recorded by M.A. Denham as folktale characters a good forty or so years before Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937.
Any newer readers who have found themselves of late drawn to Zoe Gilbert’s uncanny and compelling Folk (2018) or Edward Parnell’s reflective Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (2019) will find much reward by digging into this abundant resource. One must acknowledge, however, its function as a reference book and source for writers and folklorists, who will all appreciate this treasure on the shelf.