Folktales of England Quotes

“This time she got as far as the orchet, and then the Apple-Tree Man he called out to her, “Yew go on back whoame, my dear. There’s folk a-coming to pour cider for my roots, and shoot off guns to drive away the witches. This be no place for yew. Yew go back whoame, and don’t come awandering round at night till St. Tibb’s Eve.” The little dairy-maid her took off home with her tail stiff with vright. Properly scared she, the Apple-Tree Man did. And she never wandered at night again, ’cause she didn’t know when St. Tibb’s Eve is. Nor do anybody else.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“THERE WAS A little cat down Tibb’s Farm, not much more’n a kitten—a little dairy-maid with a face so clean as a daisy. A pretty little dear her was, but her wanted to know too much. There was fields down along as wasn’t liked. No one cared much about working there. Y’see, ’twas all elder there, and there was a queer wind used to blow there most times, and sound like someone talking it would.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“His love was so hot that he could not bear to wait, but set to to get help from the fairies. It was an unchancy thing to do, and he set about it the wrong way. First he took a fair white cloth without asking the farmer’s wife’s leave, and no good could come of that. Then he filled a pail of river water, and that wouldn’t do. Then he tried a pail of well water, and that wouldn’t do. At last, he filled a pail of clear spring water, and that was right enough, but he stood it outside the door on the night of the new moon, instead of inside, so nothing came of that. So he had to wait a whole month, till the next new moon, and for two nights running, he set the pail inside the door, but that wasn’t good enough, and still nothing happened. So he waited another month; it was May by this time, and he swept the hearth, and put the pail of water to stand on it, two nights before the new moon, and that was right. Just after midnight, he tiptoed down to the pail, and there was a thin gold oil on top of the water. He skimmed it off, and made a cake of it, with meal, and set it down on the fair white cloth. He made a circle and said the words and waited. The door opened, and a dark fairy came in, and stretched out her hand for the cake. “Not for thee,” he said, and he shouldn’t have spoken. Then a fair fairy came in, and stretched out her hand. He tapped her on the wrist and said, “Not for thee.” But he shouldn’t have touched her. Then came a most beautiful lady in green, and she said, “For me,” and ate the cake.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“A similar spell for obtaining sight of the fairies is found in a seventeenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (e Mus 173).”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“One kind of legend which has not hitherto received very much attention is the modern legend, investigated by some of the American folklorists. This legend grows up in a more sophisticated society than did the earlier ones, but it has much in common with them. It is related as a true story, and is generally supposed to have happened to a friend of the narrator, or a friend’s friend. It is often plausible enough, but it crops up in various places and has slightly different details. Possibly, its source may be a real happening, or a magazine story.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“Legends are much more common and more alive in England than wonder tales. If ghost stories are asked for at a Halloween or Christmas party an astonishing number of people can tell really good ones, which are not literary tales but experiences known in their own families or among their neighbours. Witch beliefs too have a wider acceptance than many people think. The modern practitioners of ritual witchcraft may draw more from literature than tradition, but in country places the traditional witch beliefs are obsolescent, not dead. “The Witch’s Purse,” told by Mrs. Falconer, is two generations old by now, but “Annie Luker’s Ghost,” heard by Miss Tongue in 1963, is of very recent occurrence. Even fairy beliefs can still be found, as a recent broadcast showed.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“There were once three king’s sons, the youngest of whom was called Childe Rowland, and they had a sister called Burd Helen. One day, as the boys were playing football, Childe Rowland kicked the ball over the church. Burd Helen ran to fetch it, but never returned. At length the eldest brother set out to find her, and went, by his mother’s advice, to learn from the Wizard Merlin what he should do. Merlin told him that when he got to Elfland he must chop off the head of anyone who spoke to him until he met Burd Helen, and that he must bite no bit nor drink no drop while he was in Elfland. He set out, but never returned. The second received the same advice, but fared no better. At length Childe Rowland, girded with his father’s good sword, set out by the same way. Following Merlin’s advice he cut off the head of the King of Elfland’s horseherd and cowherd, oxherd, swineherd, and henwife. Then he came to the green fairy knowe and walked round it three times widdershins, crying: “Open door! Open door!” The third time the door opened, and he found himself in the Dark Tower of Elfland, where there was neither sun nor moon and the walls shone with gems. There in the great hall he found Burd Helen, who greeted him sadly and told him that their brothers were dead. They talked long, and Childe Rowland grew hungry and asked for meat and drink. Burd Helen had no power to warn him, and she brought him what he asked for; but before he drank he looked to her, and remembered just in time. He dashed the cup to the ground, and with an ogreish cry the Elf King came into the hall. Childe Rowland drew his father’s good sword, and they fought together till he forced the Elf King to the ground, and made him promise to restore his brothers to life, and set Burd Helen free. The Elf King fetched a phial of red liquor, and anointed the ears and eyelids, nostrils, lips, and fingertips of the two Princes, so that they revived. Then he freed Burd Helen from her spell, and they went home together in great joy.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“From literary references we know that a great many of the International Tale Types were once known in England. Two quoted by Shakespeare we have been able to recover in their entirety. In Malone’s Variorum Shakespeare we find the story of Mr. Fox, with the catch phrase, “It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so,” quoted by Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing, I, i). The cumulative inscription carved over the doors and staircase in the same tale, “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold,” was used by Spenser (The Faerie Queene, III, ii). Miss Tongue found a late version of “Mr. Fox” in Somerset, and it is scattered in various forms over the country.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“The fairy stories of the old-fashioned Märchen type have almost disappeared from oral tradition in England. A few, however, are still told, and those collected in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century are some of the finest in Europe. I have included in this collection a few of those which show all the signs of having been accurately transcribed in their local dialects. Perhaps “Tom Tit Tot” is the flower of them, but “The Green Mist,” told to Mrs. Balfour by an old Lincolnshire Fenman and much less known than “Tom Tit Tot,” is a good example of the weird Fenland imagination. “The Small-Tooth Dog” is a pleasantly homely version of “Beauty and the Beast,” a tale rather rare in England; “The Black Bull of Norroway” type is commoner.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“The fairy stories of the old-fashioned Märchen type have almost disappeared from oral tradition in England. A few, however, are still told, and those collected in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century are some of the finest in Europe. I have included in this collection a few of those which show all the signs of having been accurately transcribed in their local dialects. Perhaps “Tom Tit Tot” is the flower of them, but “The Green Mist,” told to Mrs. Balfour by an old Lincolnshire Fenman and much less known than “Tom Tit Tot,” is a good example of the weird Fenland imagination. “The Small-Tooth Dog” is a pleasantly homely version of “Beauty and the Beast,” a tale rather”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries intrigue the folklorist, for the covert lore of the countryside was then bursting into public view, with the relaxing of the Church’s restraints and the emergence of the yeoman writer. The evil witchcraft controversy, to which King James I contributed his Daemonologie (1597), incited polemical tracts and court proceedings strewn with folklore notions. In Elizabethan times every Englishman was basically a countryman and comprehended, if he had not actually imbibed, the supernatural lore of the village.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“Cornwall offered a particularly attractive hunting ground for an English folklorist in view of its isolated position as the southernmost county, separated from the rest of England by the river Tamar, and, in Hunt’s youth, still traversed only by primitive conveyances. In addition, the Celtic character of the Cornish, with their recently vanished language, added mystery to the quest;”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England

“The most complete collection of traditional tales gathered in England was made by Robert Hunt in Cornwall. Hunt began noting local stories some thirty years before he published two volumes of them in 1865 under the title, Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall. As a child Hunt penned wild Cornish legends in his notebooks; in 1829 he spent ten months in a walking tour across Cornwall, deliberately ferreting out “romances” and “drolls”; in the following years he listened sympathetically to the tales of miners and peasants in his capacity as secretary of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society; and in 1862 he even engaged an itinerant postmaster and poet to scour the countryside for remaining traditions. Other, lesser collectors turned over their hoards to Hunt. This long-range, intensive, and systematic folktale quest still stands alone in the history of English folklore.”
― Katharine M. Briggs, Folktales of England