It burst onto bookshelves in the spring of 1973, a black and gold slab of a book: 552 pages bulging with tales of pagan festivals, green magic, historical oddities, local superstitions as well as, to quote, a “regional guide to Britain’s folklore”. 1 And 2023 marks a very special year for this much-loved publication, as The Reader’s Digest doorstop, the inimitable Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, celebrates its 50th birthday.2
The late 1960s and early 1970s marked peak years in the growing passion for folklore and the supernatural (see Gail Nina Anderson, “The Old Ways”, FT381:36-43). Robin Hardy’s folk horror The Wicker Man would arrive in cinemas later that same year as Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, while the silver screen had recently seen Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins in Michael Reeves’s The Witchfinder General (1968) and Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), each merging the supernatural with 17th and 18th century history, respectively (see FT367:32-39).3
Television also got in on the trend for all things folkloric and supernatural. Consider the original run of the BBC’s Ghost Story for Christmas from 1971-1978 (FT387:34-39), or Nigel Kneale’s still unsettling 1972 The Stone Tape (FT418:28-35). To this can be added Geoffrey Bayldon’s eccentric performance as the 11th century wizard Catweazle (FT424:36), transported to modern-day rural England and Doctor Who’s flirtation with the occult when Jon Pertwee battled ‘The Dæmons’ of Devils’ End (complete with Morris dancers) in 1971. In music, folk rock with bands such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Steeleye Span all carried the stories and tunes of the 17th and 18th centuries into the last few decades of the 20th century.
Cynics could argue that Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain was an attempt to cash in on the folk boom, but this would be unfair. Gathering a number of pre-eminent experts in Ireland) the book was authoritative and ambitious in its scope. Here was a serious attempt, as contributor Jacqueline Simpson later recalled, to “rouse the curiosity and interest of many who had never before realised that there was such a thing as British folklore…”4 Indeed, by collating stories from across Britain it was hoped that, as chief editor Russell Ash claimed, the book would “provide a unique insight into the long story of the British people – a memory-bank which reveals the hopes and fears, ideas and experiences of the numberless generations of our ancestors.”5
SCREAMING SKULLS AND HEADLESS HOUNDS
I have no idea why my parents had a copy of the book. They had no interest in such subjects, but as a child growing up in the mid-1970s, in my young hands, this weighty volume seemed irresistibly powerful. Wrapped in serious black with an illustration of a terrifying disembodied horned head emblazoned in gold, it enthralled and scared me simultaneously. The book felt strangely
