Katharine Briggs Awards

On Tuesday12th November I sauntered into London, and more specifically to Cecil Sharp House, for the folk culture awards of the year. 

Katharine Briggs (1898-1980) was an extraordinary researcher, folklorist and storyteller. She gained her PhD with a thesis on Folklore in seventeenth-century literature (Folklore in Jacobean Literature) after the Second World War and wrioe many books on fairies and folklore, including The Anatomy of Puck and its sequel, Pale Hecate's Team (1962), An Encyclopedia of Fairies (1976), as well as a number of children's books such as The Legend of Maiden-Hair or Hobberdy Dick (her first published book), and Kate Crackernuts. A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part A: Folk Narratives (1970) was re-published in three volumes in 2011 as Folk Tales of Britain, and is described by Philip Pullman in its introduction as the fullest and the most authoritative collection of British folktales that exists. In 1969 she was awarded the Doctorate in Literature, and made President of the Folklore Society, a post she held until 1972. Upon her retirement, an annual lecture and book prize was named in her honour. It was this award that I was going to see.

However, before the book prize was to be given out, we were to be treated to the lecture by Doc Rowe. And we'd see the Folklore Society's coveted Coote Lake Medal awarded to Professor Ronald Hutton for services to the study of the subject.

The lecture was fascinating and focused on the transmission of folk culture through time. Rowe developed an early interest in traditional song, stemming largely from 1950s BBC radio broadcasts. Performing on the folk club circuit as a singer from 1963, he met BBC producer Charles Parker, who – with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger – was working on the BBC Radio Ballads (1957–64). He has since cited Parker and the "Ballads" as amongst his strongest abiding influences. Rowe went on to work with Parker, MacColl and Seeger on a variety of folk-song and drama related projects.

An equally formative experience for Rowe was a 1963 visit to the May Day 'Obby 'Oss festival in the Cornish town of Padstow. He has returned every year since to continuously document the tradition. It also triggered a wider focus on seasonal events and popular cultural traditions. Over the subsequent decades, Rowe has attended and recorded a wide range of Britain's annual calendar customs. Since the 1960s, Rowe has focused on collecting and celebrating folklore, oral history and the vernacular music and traditions of Britain and Ireland. In 2002, Rowe was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Sheffield, and in 2005 received the English Folk Dance and Song Society's Gold Badge for his documentation of traditional song and dance. Rowe has been a committee member of the Oral History Society, the Traditional Song Forum and the Folklore Society, which - in 2007 - presented Rowe with its Coote Lake Medal for his research into folklore. 

Recipient of this year's medal was Professor Ronald Hutton - a familiar face from many TV appearances - and undoubtedly Britain's most noted folklore academic. I first met him over a decade ago when he was a guest on a BBC Radio 4 show that I co-wrote called The Museum of Curiosity. He specialises in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol, Hutton has written over a dozen books and he holds a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and is a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Finally there was the Katharine Briggs Award itself which - despite a strong longlist - was won by Tabitha Stanmore for her book Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic. An excellent book and a very worthy winner. And it was a genuinely lovely evening where I caught up with a number of friends and fellow folklorists, as well as artist Ben Edge. 

Roll on next year!