Studio Brief 2 - Visual Journalist CONVERSATION

Transcript 3- Mark Hewitt (Yorkshire Dales National Park Conservationist)

-FOLKLORE AND THE LANDSCAPE

A: We’re any of these stories told by the pagans to sort of warn against the Christians?

M: Not really because, sort of, what we call pagan religions and customs were so ingrained in people, they were used to multiple gods as we would call them, or spirits, sort of things in the landscape. So, in a sense, even though Christians were making Jesus to be above all, to a lot of everyday people it was just one more god, and you know, if the lord of the manor was around, something like that, you would just make sure that you spoke more about that than you would any others. And you would keep quiet about things…

Over time, erm, these things get pushed and pressed and people take a different view because, just the normal way of things seeming into your everyday life. And when it gets to that point where you need to attend church, or you need to go to this festival then, things start to drop of the end. But a lot of what we do now in the Christian religion, you can go back and find lots and lots of examples of the same things, just with a slightly different twist. Christmas is really that festival of the end of the darkness and start of the light coming. It’s the same with Easter. It’s all about the seasons. That’s what people were absolutely tied up in, there very survival was based upon. The whole landscape would speak to them, myths, stories, folklore, folktales, they all have kernels of truth in them, and they all have, well one of the things that comes from it is how people can relate their everyday life to things. If you couldn’t rationally explain something, you would fill that void with something else. So you would start talking about witches, you would start talking about dragons, and they seem fanciful and people believe in these things, but they’re worlds were smaller in lots of ways, although not in that they were connected across oceans by various trade deals. But there was a lot of things that people couldn’t explain, so you would fill that with things.

A lot of stuff was literally just word of mouth. People couldn’t write, they couldn’t read, so everything was by word of mouth. You would find out news that taken place, maybe a year ago, or a few months back, because it takes people time to travel to your village to tell you those things.

M: When we w look at the landscape now, the landscape is very changed to what it was, even a few years ago, but certainly centuries ago. So the landscape was key to people, it was what they lived in, it was all around them. Woodlands, wetlands, rivers, hills, they all hand specific, almost meanings to people that we probably don’t see in the same way now.

Ilkley Moor, and the cow and calf, Ilkley Moor is also known as Rombald’s Moor, and Rombald was supposedly a giant, one of a lot of giants who lived in that area, and they were arguing and Rombald was the most argumentative of them all, and he had a wife who was pretty tough on him. So legend says that she was in a fearful mood with him, and was chasing him, and he stood on a rock, which cracked and broke, which is why we have got the cow and the calf. And they would fight with giants on the other side and so that’s why Almscliff Cragg looks like Almscliff Cragg does, and it’s why the rocks on the Chevin are all split because they’ve been having these fights.

A: So do you think people make up folklore stories because they didn’t understand the science of the land?

M: Yes, that’s how we would say it now, but for them it’s not making a story up, for them it was very real, as far as we can tell.

A: Do you think pieces of landscape that are shaped like animals, do people tell stories that they are animals?

M: Yeah, and trees. So what Tolkien did with Lord of the Rings, that’s not somebody with an overactive imagination, that’s somebody who has looked at old manuscripts, he’s looked at the landscape, and he’s come up with stories as we see them. If you like, our own modern myths, but they are very much couched in the terms of what people would have talked about in the past.

So there’s the story of Semerwater, in Wensleydale. Semerwater is one of the very few glacial lakes that we have left, and it’s got a big blockage at one end, and a small river that comes out of it, called the Bain, supposedly the smallest river in Britain. If you look at it in purely historical terms, glacial lake, if you go back far enough, quite rich in fish, great place to go hunting. But these areas would have been used for offerings, to Gods, water was a hugely important thing for people, for pagans, as we call them, for all kinds of reasons. Because water has got such a transformative power, so you would put things in there and hope things would change.

M: At Appletreewick, there’s a place called Troller’s Gill, which is lots and lots of limestone formations. […] People see these and their imaginations get going… so you get different stories. If you go to Troller’s Gill, there is supposed to be this big dark dog called the Barguest, and the Barguest is something that is quite common to lots of places.

A: Yes, I read about this.

M: They just fit to the landscape of particular people. And I think the Barguest, was an influence in The Hound of the Baskervilles.

A: Do you know what the stones are that have got the cup and ring markings on? What is it about?

M: So they’re called cup and ring stones, which means, basically, the cup is a depression which has been formed, and these are clearly man made, as opposed to natural weathering. The whole of this landscape has masses and masses of them. And, the ring, is a series of patterns, and so people have said, maybe it was where people sharpened their stone axes, but it’s not that.

A: Yes they have a very uniform fashion.

M: But it’s just the wrong kind of pattern. Some people have said that it’s a map that we now can’t understand. That might well be a good argument, the features you put on a map are the features that are important to you to navigate a landscape. They might not have needed a map in the say way we do, they might have needed a map to say; ‘avoid the dragon’s lair’, something like that.

J: Because they were more connected to the landscape.

M: So us, we need a map to show us where the footpaths are. They knew where the footpaths were.

A: So it’s like a sort of visual language then isn’t it?

M: Well other people have said it might be a kind of language, which I think might be a harder one. But other people say it might be like marker stones. I think that’s a hard one as well because they are not that prominent, and they are likely to have not been that prominent when they were first done. […]

Now, some of the patterns of cup and ring stones, appear to show caves.

A: Nearby caves?

M: Well like the Caves in France, the Lascaux caves, you do see some of these kind of patterns. So again, is that a language, is it a map, I don’t know. They’re really enigmatic. But one of the things we can say is, quite clearly the meaning of those stones was lost years ago, because nobody has ever found anything about it.

A: Do you think it is because people started to learn to read and talk to each other, so they didn’t need that language anymore?

M: It could well be. It may have been a language of symbols.

[…]

J: what’s the most visually interesting thing, for you, connected to folklore?

M: From a folklore point of view, to some extent, what I think would be the most symbolic thing for folklore, is a picture of a fire. Because that’s where people sat and talked, that’s where people made the stories, that’s where people sang the songs. So the most tangible thing is a fire, because folklore is about the people. Something that might illustrate folklore, might be gargoyles on a cathedral, you might see sculpture of the green man. […] The green man is a mixture of all kinds of things, but it is basically the spirit of the woods, he is nature. So symbols like that, would be universal across countries, maybe not the same name, but similar images.

A: Do you know anything about Morris dancing and the green men? I read about sides of Morris dancing that dress as the green man.

M: Well you do have different groups of Morris dancers who take on different roles and have different dances for that. You might say from an illustration point of view that Morris dancers and a very good way of illustrating folklore because they are doing exactly that, they are communicating to the community through dance and music.

A: Do you think their dances are a sort of method of communication as well?

M: Well you’ve got to remember that a lot of the Morris dancing is a revival, so a lot of it was really born out of the Victorian times. But what we can see is where elements of those things have come from, our interpretation of what has come before. So there was some kind of community group dancing. Story tellers were revered, because they were the people who brought news, who entertained.

A: I think the storytelling originates from the courts. Like the fool in Morris dancing is like the jester of courts…

M: And yet the jester changes over time as well. While he was seen as a figure of fun, he served a very important purpose. Jesters were quite probably a cross over with the shaman. They were revered because they could cross over and bring messages back to help the community.

[...]

A: Do you know about Fairy dell on Ilkley Moor?

M: Well, fairies, elves, leprechauns, they’re all a certain type of folklore creature. They are a metaphor, but they are real to people, people believe that these things can exist. So fairies are usually seen as being relatively benign creatures, unless you cross them. So if you cross them, imposing yourself on their time, then essentially something bad might happen to you. There are all kinds of ways that people tell the dangers of fairies. There are similar stories across different traditions.

REFLECTIONS ON RESEARCH
This interview was so useful!

I've gathered some really valuable and interesting points on the role of folklore in history and how this connects to the landscape, and more specifically how it connects the landscape to people. I'm particularly interested to further this idea of folklore and landscape within modern cultures, particularly through Morris dancing. For me, Morris dancing seems an iconic image of folk cultures in Britain, so I would like to develop this dialogue between folklore and folk practice within my project. To do this I may need to get in contact with some Morris dancing groups and perhaps watch some dances to collect ideas surrounding narratives and traditions.