Folklore in Nineteenth-Century English Literature

THE Romantic Revival set the key of literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Poetry moved from London back into the country, the rustic country which had formerly been the proper subject of pastorals and the wild, remote, inaccessible country which had only lately ceased to be 'horrid' and become 'romantic'. It is of course unnecessary to say that every literary fashion has its precursors and successors and that nothing is rigidly conditioned by date, still, the change of air and temper is more noticeable at the beginning of the nineteenth century than at most other periods, and with the new focus upon country things it was natural that the beliefs, practices and customs of the countryman should gain a new significance. Two strands in eighteenth-century literature had prepared the way for this, the Gothic Revival and the factual naturalism of writers like Thomson, Crabbe and Shenstone. One foreshadowed the later delight in things far distant in time and space, things strange, remote and wild, and the other, finding significance in homely scenes and country occupations, prepared the way for that minute examination of Nature, the love of flowers, creatures and scenery for their own sakes, which marks something new in literature in the nineteenth century. A little while ago in a small, intimate poetry-reading group to which I belong, the subject of 'flowers' was chosen for one month's reading, and it was most illuminating to notice how in the earlier poets, right down to the nineteenth century, flowers were linked to human and symbolical themes, only from the nineteenth century were individual flowers looked at for themselves. This is perhaps a digression, but it shows a new climate of thought, and it is in this climate that folk beliefs again attract the attention that they had aroused among the Elizabethan poets and the seventeenth-century antiquaries. It is impossible to think of the Romantic Revival without