Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century National Cultivation of Culture

Edited by Joep Leerssen

Editorial Board John Breuilly, Ina Ferris, Patrick Geary, John Neubauer, Tom Shippey, Anne-Marie Thiesse

VOLUME 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/ncc National Cultivation of Culture Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Edited by Joep Leerssen Long Nineteenth Century Editorial Board John Breuilly, Ina Ferris, Patrick Geary, John Neubauer, Tom Shippey, Anne-Marie Thiesse Edited by Timothy Baycroft and David Hopkin

VOLUME 4

Leiden • boston The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/ncc 2012 Cover illustration: Traditional costumes of Alsace. Reproduction of watercolor by P. Kauffmann (1849–1940) published in 1919 in L’Illustration.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Folklore and nationalism in Europe during the long nineteenth century / edited by Timothy Baycroft and David Hopkin. p. cm. — (National cultivation of culture v.4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-21158-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-21183-4 (e-book) 1. Folklore and nationalism—Europe—History—19th century. 2. National characteristics, European— History—19th century. 3. Philosophy, European—History—19th century. 4. Europe—Social life and customs—19th century. I. Baycroft, Timothy. II. Hopkin, David M., 1966–

GR135.F645 2012 398.2094—dc23 2012015314

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ...... vii Acknowledgements ...... xi Notes on Contributors ...... xiii

Introduction ...... 1 Timothy Baycroft

Oral Epic: The Nation Finds a Voice ...... 11 Joep Leerssen

Shaping the Voice of the People in Nineteenth-Century Operas ..... 27 Krisztina Lajosi

Folk Culture and Nation-Building in the Less than Developed World: A Study on the Visual Culture of Citizenship ...... 49 Ilia Roubanis

Ideas of Folk and Nation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Architecture ...... 69 Peter Blundell Jones

The Regional and the Global: Folk Culture at World’s Fairs and the Reinvention of the Nation ...... 99 Angela Schwarz

Ethnographic Display and Political Narrative: The Salle de France of the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro ...... 113 Daniel DeGroff

Displaying the Arlésienne: Museums, Folklife and Regional Identity in France ...... 137 Anne Dymond

Folklore as a Weapon: National Identity in German-Annexed Alsace, 1890–1914 ...... 161 Detmar Klein vi contents

Negotiating Progress and Degeneracy: Irish Antiquaries and the Discovery of the ‘Folk’, 1770–1844 ...... 193 Clare O’Halloran

Narrating Scotland: Andrew Lang’s Coloured Fairy Book Collection, The Gold of Fairnilee, and ‘A Creelfull of Celtic Stories’ ...... 207 Sara M. Hines

England—The Land without Folklore? ...... 227 Jonathan Roper

An Imperialist Folklore? Establishing the Folk-Lore Society in London ...... 255 Chris Wingfield and Chris Gosden

The Ballad Revival and National Literature: Textual Authority and the Invention of Tradition ...... 275 David Atkinson

National Folklore, National Drama and The Creation of Visual National Identity: The Case of Jón Árnason, Sigurður Guðmundsson and Indriði Einarsson in Iceland ...... 301 Terry Gunnell

Oral Traditions and the Making of the Finnish Nation ...... 325 Pertti Anttonen

Sorrowful Folksong and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Finland ...... 351 Vesa Kurkela

Folklore beyond Nationalism: Identity Politics and Scientific Cultures in a New Discipline ...... 371 David Hopkin

Further Reading ...... 403

Index ...... 417 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Roubanis 1.. The global dissemination of classicism, notes made by ABNC ...... 58 2.. Five franc note, issued by the Bank of France, 1873 ...... 60 3.. 25 LMU drachmas note, issued by Bank of Epirothessally, 1887 60 4.. Cupid the bearer of wealth (Greece and Brazil) ...... 61 5.. Commerce and navigation (Greece and Mexico) ...... 61 6.. History overlooking the world (Greece and Chile) ...... 62 7.. The idealised folk european genre ...... 64 8.. The equivalence of physical and virtual space in the 1930s, the case study of Turkey ...... 67

Blundell Jones 1.. A.W.N. Pugin, plate from True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture 1853, contrasting an exposed Gothic roof structure with a neoclassical false ceiling on exaggerated hangers ...... 74 2.. Philip Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath 1859 for William Morris, the corbelled sewing window as seen from outside ...... 75 3.. Philip Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath 1859 for William Morris, the well at the centre of the cloister-courtyard ...... 76 4.. George Devey, design for a cottage, ink presentation drawing, Devey Collection, University of Sheffield ...... 77 5.. George Devey, Cottage at St Alban’s Court, sketch, Devey Collection, University of Sheffield ...... 78 6.. W.R. Lethaby, Brockhampton Church, Herefordshire, 1901 ...... 79 7.. W.R. Lethaby, Melsetter House, Hoy, Orkneys, 1898 ...... 80 8.. Drawing of hayricks published as fig. 49 in Lethaby’s book Home and Country Arts, 1923 ...... 81 9.. Hermann Muthesius, Freudenberg House, Berlin, 1907–8 ...... 83 10.. Skansen open air museum, Stockholm, interior of the Oktorp farmhouse from Halland, 18th century ...... 85 11.. Lars Israel Wahlman, Tjöloholm Castle near Gothenburg, 1904 85 12.. Lars Israel Wahlman, own house ‘Tallom’ in a Stockholm suburb 1904–6 ...... 86 viii list of illustrations

13.. Theodor Fischer, replanning scheme for Munich Bogenhausen, 1898, irregular due to embracing given features, from Theodor Fischer by Winfried Nerdinger ...... 88 14.. Theodor Fischer, school on Elisabethplatz, Munich 1901, a public building used to mark a public square ...... 89 15.. Theodor Fischer, Post office building in Hall, Tyrol, Austria, 1910, building ‘Tyrolean’ ...... 90 16.. Hugo Häring, Garkau farm, near Lübeck, Germany, 1924–5: functional forms and natural materials ...... 91 17.. Gunnar Asplund, Woodland Chapel, Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm 1920 ...... 92 18.. Gunnar Asplund, design for Little Chapel, 1918, an earlier version of the same project: Swedish Architecture Museum, Stockholm ...... 93 19.. Gunnar Asplund Woodland Crematorium, Stockholm 1940 ...... 94 20..Gunnar Asplund summer house at Stennäs, 1937–40, fireplace . 95

Schwarz 1..Parc étranger of the Exposition universelle in Paris 1867, from a contemporary drawing ...... 104 2..An ‘Austrian village’ in Paris 1867 ...... 105 3..Contemporary woodcut showing visitors (on the right) to the Hindeloopen chamber at the Exposition universelle in Paris in 1878 ...... 109 4..The Amager room with mannequins in local costume (from a drawing) ...... 110

DeGroff 1..French postcard of one of Hazelius’s cottage interiors as exhibited at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878 ...... 114 2..The Oceania display at the MET ...... 117 3..The Palais du Trocadéro (later replaced by the Palais de Chaillot). The Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro was installed in the west wing ...... 120 4..Peasant from the Landes region ...... 124 5..Interior scene: mannequins in Breton costume ...... 126 list of illustrations ix

Dymond 1.. ‘Salle des Barômes avec cinq sculptures antiques’, Museon Arlaten ...... 149 2.. Augustin Dumas, Arlésienne à la Vénus d’Arles, c. 1860 ...... 153 3.. E. Lacour, 33—Arlésienne, c. 1900 ...... 154 4.. E. Lacour, 2176—Arles—La Fèsto Vierginenco au Théâtre Romain—La Tribune et les gradins. c. 1904 ...... 156

Wingfield & Gosden 1.. Membership of the Folk-Lore Society in 1881, by place of residence ...... 268 2.. Papers published by the Folk-Society by major source location mentioned in the text ...... 270

Kurkela 1.. Sorrow folksong in romance style: Tuoll’ on mun kultani (My love is there) ...... 360 2.. Sorrow folksong, pentachord type: Kultani kukkuu kaukana (My darling calls far away) ...... 363

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The papers in this volume are the outcome of two events. The first was a conference dedicated to ‘The Voice of the People. The European Folk Revival, 1760–1914’, held in September 2007 at the University of Shef- field’s Centre for Nineteenth-century Studies. It was organized by Timothy Baycroft, Joan Beal, Matthew Campbell, Hamish Mathison, Michael Per- raudin, Marcus Waithe and Jonathan Woolley, and was supported by the British Academy and the Folklore Society. The second was a workshop entitled ‘From Folk Culture to National Culture’, held in the History Fac- ulty, University of Oxford, in April 2008. This workshop was organized by David Hopkin, with the assistance of Ollie Douglas, as part of the Modern European History Research Centre’s series of workshops on the theme ‘Towards a New Understanding of Community, Nation and Empire in the Nineteenth Century’, supported by the John Fell Oxford University Press Research Fund. The editors would like to thank the funding bodies whose generosity made these events possible, as well as the all the organizers, participants and assistants who ensured that they were so productive. A particular note of thanks goes to Joep Leerssen who suggested that this volume would make a suitable volume in the Cultivation of National Culture series.

DH and TB

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Pertti Anttonen is Lecturer and Adjunct Professor in Folklore Stud- ies at the University of Helsinki. He works on the history and theory of nationalism, tradition, modernity and ethnopoetics. He was leader of the Finnish Academy of Sciences research project ‘The Textualisation of Oral Tradition and its Modern Contextualization in Finland’. He is author of Tradition through Modernity: Postmodernism and the Nation-State in Folk- lore Scholarship (2005).

David Atkinson is a Research Fellow at the Elphinstone Institute, Uni- versity of Aberdeen. He has written extensively about folk song and textual scholarship. He is editor of the Folk Music Journal published by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and is secretary of the Kommission für Volksdichtung. He is author of The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method and Practice (2002), and co-editor of Folk Song: Tradition, Revival and Re-Creation (2004).

Timothy Baycroft is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on nationalism, borders and identity. He is the author of Culture, Identity and Nationalism: French Flanders in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2004), France: Inventing the Nation (2008), and (with Mark Hewitson) editor of What is a Nation? Europe 1789– 1914 (2006). He is an executive member of the Society for the Study of French History, and reviews editor of the journal French History.

Peter Blundell Jones is Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, where his interests include the birth of modernism and its expo- nents in Germany and Scandinavia such as Gunnar Asplund, Hugo Haring and Hans Scharoun.

Daniel DeGroff is a doctoral student in History at Queen Mary, Univer- sity of London. His research is on the interplay between politics, regionalism and cultural identities in the French Third Republic, with forays into the history of ethnographic display. xiv notes on contributors

Anne Dymond is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Lethbridge. Her research has focused on the politics of place and the creation of cultural identity in Provence. Recent publications have examined representations of the Parisienne and the Arlésienne at the Universelle Exposition of 1900, French railway posters, and Neo-Impressionist art.

Chris Gosden is Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on the relationships between archaeology, anthropology and colonialism, as well as the history of museums and collecting. He was leader of the project ‘The Other Within: An Anthropol- ogy of Englishness’ at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Terry Gunnell is Professor in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland. His research interests range from Old Nordic religion and mythology to contemporary Scandinavian folklore, and from the history of drama to contemporary dramatic arts. He is author of The Origins of Drama in Scan- dinavia (1995), Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area (2007), and editor of Legends and Landscape (2008).

Sara Hines is a doctoral student in English at the University of Edinburgh, where she is researching the Fairy Book series edited by Andrew Lang in the context of Victorian folklore collections and children’s literature.

David Hopkin is Lecturer and Tutor in Modern History, Hertford Col- lege, University of Oxford. In his research he explores the social history of peasants, soldiers, sailors and textile workers through their oral cultures. He also researches the history of folklore studies. He is editor of the journal Cultural and Social History, and author of Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, 1766–1870 (2002) and Voices of the People in Nineteenth- Century France (2012).

Detmar Klein is Lecturer in History at University College, Cork, where he is preparing a monograph on ‘The Germanisation Project: Alsace, Impe- rial Germany and the Battle for National Identity, 1870–1918’.

Vesa Kurkela is Professor of Music History at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. He has written extensively on various topics of music history in Finland and elsewhere: popular music, music publishing, music and notes on contributors xv nationalism, folk music and ideology, orchestral repertoires, radio music, and recording industry. In 2011–2015 he is leader of the Academy of Fin- land research project ‘Rethinking “Finnish” Music History: Transnational construction of musical life in Finland from the1870s until the 1920s’.

Krisztina Lajosi is Lecturer in Modern European Literature and Culture in the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam. She is research coordinator of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences project ‘National Music and Cultural Transfer in Europe’. Her thesis (2008) was on ‘Opera and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Europe’, and her research now focuses on the figure of the poet in nineteenth-century culture.

Joep Leerssen is Professor of Modern European Literature at the Univer- sity of Amsterdam. His research covers the history of language and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the emergence of national stereotypes, romantic nationalism and Irish cultural history. In 2008 he was awaded the Spinoza Prize by the Netherlands Organisation for Scien- tific Research, and used it to set up ‘SPIN: Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms’ (www.spinnet.eu). Recent books include National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (2007), and Imagology: The Cultural Construc- tion and Literary Representation of National Characters (2007).

Clare O’Halloran is Lecturer in History at University College Cork. Her current research focuses on antiquarian writing in Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its relationship to the rise of popular nationalism. She is co-editor of The Irish Review and author of Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate and Cultural Politics in Ireland, c. 1750–1800 (2004).

Jonathan Roper is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Esto- nian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu. His research focuses on traditional linguistic genres and devices. He is author of English Ver- bal Charms (2005), and editor of Charms and Charming in Europe (2004), Charms, Charmers and Charming (2008) and Alliteration in Culture (2011).

Ilias Roubanis is a Lecturer in the Greek School of Public Administra- tion, who studied at the European University Institute (Florence). xvi notes on contributors

Angela Schwarz is Professor of Modern History at the University of Siegen where she researches the history of tourism, international exhibitions, international cooperation and the production and dissemination of knowledge. She has published Die Reise ins Dritte Reich (1993), Der Schlüs- sel zur modern Welt (1998), Der Park in der Metropole, (2005), and Vom Industriebetrieb zum Landschaftspark, (2001), and is currently editing a volume on the debates on evolutionary theory and its ramifications for the general public since 1859, Streitfall Evolution. Eine Kulturgeschichte.

Chris Wingfield is Associate Lecturer at the Open University in the West Midlands. He is also an Honorary Research Associate at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, where he was a researcher on The Other Within: An Anthropology of Englishness, an ESRC-funded research project between 2006 & 2009. Previously he was curator of anthropology at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and his current research concerns the museum and collections of the London Missionary Society. INTRODUCTION

Timothy Baycroft

Both the growth of development of nationalism in its manifold forms and the expansion of collections and publications drawn from folklore during the nineteenth century have received widespread attention of scholars from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives during the past few decades. This volume is a modest attempt to engage in comparative analysis, both methodologically and in terms of the subject matter, and to begin to explore the kinds of conclusions which can be found in a cross- Europe interdisciplinary study. It is necessarily selective, providing individual comparative chapters and single case studies in juxtaposition in order to open up dialogue, and hopefully to provoke further thought and work both in nationalism and folklore studies. Collection and research into folklore took off on a large scale during the nineteenth century, at a time when nationalism was an expanding political force throughout the continent. Several common features can be identified between the two, as both contain elements of the search for ‘the people’ and its authentic voice, increasingly important in the nineteenth-century political as well as socio-cultural climate. Folklore often constituted one of the key elements of national identities, a distinguishing feature of a group of people which could be identified as a nation through their folkloric cultural practices, stories, traditions, dwellings, songs, music, costume, dialect, cuisine, etc. It was also an interesting scientific objective in its own end, with a variety of different types of amateur, gentleman and professional scholars of a romantic bent interested in identifying, classifying and presenting folklore in all its variety for its own sake or in combination with other types of analysis of human society. It was also taken as an inspiration for all kinds of romantic (and indeed realist and modern) art, from literature through music and architecture to the visual arts, and presented and marvelled at in world’s fairs and museums. In the meantime, nationalism was a growing political force, challenged throughout the nineteenth century by the reactionary right and the internationalist left, and which gradually developed an entire theory of legitimacy because of the nationalists’ claims that the most legitimate way to organise states was according to the ‘natural’ divisions between the various 2 timothy baycroft

‘peoples’ which existed. In such a climate the identification of which groups constituted a people had enormous political ramifications, giving folklore enormous potential to be instrumentalised at the highest political level as a legitimising discourse. Not every nation put folkloric representations at the very centre of its national identity, but they all included some elements of what we can call folklore, and many did have folklore at the very heart of their national discourse. Culture is a key component of all nations in some way, and one of the most self-evident potential claims to legitimate nationhood. The relationship between nations and ‘the folk’, and the respective mythologies associated with both concepts can thus be seen to be both complex and multifarious.1 Nationalism and folklore as well as the social, cultural and political ramifications of group identity have received a great deal of attention in the last couple of decades. Studies of nationalism by historians, political scientists and historical sociologists have been built upon in a variety of other fields, from psychology through linguistics and literature to musicology. To the wealth of models and schemes of classification of nations has been added a greater understanding of collective memory, commemoration, and the ways in which symbols such as flags or war memorials, public systems of education and other state institutions, as well as art, literature and film contribute to the processes of nation-building and the relationship of individuals to national collective identity. Folklore has also been an object of study for several disciplines, from anthropology and sociology through history and literary studies, both to gain an understanding of the context in which folklore was produced, collected, disseminated, classified and turned into symbols by nations or other groups, as well as for its own sake as literature, music or artefacts. Important work has been carried out within several academic disciplines, as well as in departments and associations devoted to the interdisciplinary study of folklore, which have varied in size and fortune from place to place, but which bear witness to the potential of the field. A good starting point is with the abstract, symbolic nature of the nation. Although nations may very well exist firmly in the minds of individuals, their objective qualities are always difficult to pin down. One can measure the area, population, GNP, and identify the institutions of a state,

1 For more on the early relationship of folklorists to nationalism, see Roger D. Abra- hams, “Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics”, Journal of American Folklore 106 (1993): 3–37. introduction 3 but nations are conceptual, emotional, abstract entities which may be associated with a state, but can only be grasped through their representations, symbols and the understanding of those who consider themselves to belong to the nation. Because of their abstract nature, the attributes and characteristics of nations change over time and space, and according to the subjective perspective of each individual both within and outside of the nation. The symbolic essence of nations does not, however, in any way deny their fundamental reality as a part of the lived experience of their populations, but does make them fundamentally mythical in character. Mythical in this sense does not imply false, only that reality becomes charged with meaning such that real events, people or places acquire symbolic significance as ‘national’, thereby defining certain societies, cultures or territories as central elements, if not the very essence of a nation. In this way an individual becomes a national hero, a region becomes a national homeland, and a cultural practice becomes a national tradition, each of which can eventually serve as a source of identification and identity for the members of the nation.2 This fundamentally mythical quality of nations lies at the heart of two of the most significant and widespread images for understanding nations, and which will also prove valuable for studying folklore: the imagined community and the invented tradition. According to Benedict Ander- son’s model, nations are ‘imagined’ because they are too large for all of the members to know each other, and given individuals can only conceive of the nation in their minds as an extended community. He also points out the potentially great strength of the attachment of members to their nations, such that it can be compared to a religion.3 Invented traditions, described in this way first of all in the book of that title edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, are those elements of culture which acquire ‘national’ symbolic meaning through the action of political elites who consciously try to further their own interests through the further development of national identity among a population which identifies itself with the tradition.4 National meaning can be conferred, for example, upon a dish of food, if those who sit down to eat it believe or imagine

2 See Timothy Baycroft, France: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold, 2008) for further elaboration of the mythical qualities of nations. 3 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism 2nd edn., (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 5–7. 4 Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 4 timothy baycroft themselves to be in communion with the rest of their nation while they do so. The concept of inventing traditions implied the deliberate action of an elite which was doing the invention, often with the backing of the resources and structure of a state, although national meaning can arise more spontaneously ‘from below’ as well. An example of the latter might be the perpetuation of local religious festivals of practices which become defined as inherently national in a state trying to mould itself as secular. In some cases national meaning can be attributed to things which in and of themselves have no objective content, in which case the inventive dimension of nation building is that much more obvious. The most straightforward example is a national flag, which on its own has no meaning, but can become infused with national significance in certain contexts. Events drawn from the past can also become integrated and interpreted as ‘national’ history, one important facet of which has described by scholars as ‘collective memory’: the personalising and individually identifying with a history by thinking of it both as shared among the imagined community and as ‘ours’. Here again, collective memory can be invented, and, in the words of Robert Gildea, ‘elaborated by a political community for its own ends’5 or it can arise rather more spontaneously. Where it is deliberately constructed, rival elites will seek to give symbolic national meaning to different events and cultural practices which correspond to their particular political point of view. An example would be trying to define the French nation as fundamentally Catholic on the one hand, or fundamentally republican and secular on the other, each justified by its own historical collective memories stressing different events and heroes.6 Folk- lore was often at the heart of the memories and myths that such political communities developed, and often used as one of their most fundamental arguments. Perhaps the most striking examples can be found in the Scan- danavian nations, where epic sagas from folklore were used as defining national characteristics, forming an essential element in their claims to nationhood and national legitimacy. This leads us to an essential element in national symbolism which is the question of legitimacy and authenticity. Politically (in the modern period at least) a nation was defined as that from which sovereignty and political legitimacy could be derived. In the quest for developing, identifying or inventing national symbols, cultural practices, historical narratives

5 Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994). 6 See Baycroft, France. introduction 5 or other defining characteristics, success often goes hand in hand with conferring authenticity upon them. The authenticity of the mythology of nations will in turn strengthen the claims for legitimacy, either in terms of the right to form a state defined in the terms of the nation, or to create an internal political system which recognises the rights of the nation and where political power resides (rhetorically at least) with the nation. Here again, folklore was often central to nationalist claims for legitimacy, derived from association with the ‘true’ people identified through folk culture. In addition to the Scandanivan example mentioned, many eastern European nations were carved out of the breakup of great empires using such claims to legitimacy. Borders between nations were also fought over in part in terms of which villages exhibited the characteristics of particular nations’ identifiable (or claimed) folkloric practices and customs. An inherent component of most claims for national legitimacy and identity was language. An identifying marker of culture, the use of a particular language indicated belonging, conferred membership of individuals in the nation, and also helped serve to mark out the boundaries between nations. States, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, alongside the codification and standardisation of their languages, actively promoted their dissemination throughout the population through education, partly as a way to consolidate the nation, integrate the citizens more thoroughly and also to make the institutions of the nation (particularly the army and the civil service) more cohesive.7 Meanwhile, many of the early scholars interested in folklore, from Vico through the Grimms and were also fascinated by language, its origins and centrality to all human endeavour.8 In this way language was a key component for both nations and folklore, as one of the key markers of that which was held to bind societies (nations) together through authentic origins measured by language. A final element of nations which bears mentioning here is the necessary consciousness of the membership and boundaries of nations, and the

7 See Brian Vick, “Langauge and Nation”, in Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson, eds., What is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 155–70, and E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1990), esp pp. 51–63 and 93–100. 8 See for example: Giambattista Vico, The New Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984) (original 1725); Jakob Karl Ludwig Grimm, On the Origin of Language. Raymond Wiley, trans and ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1984). Orig. Uber den Ursprung der Sprache, 1851; Johann Gott- fried von Herder, Philosophical Writings. Michael N. Forster, trans and ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), part II: Philosophy of Language, contains “Treatise on the Origin of Language” (orig. 1772, “Abhandlung uber den Ursprung der Sprache”). 6 timothy baycroft need for individuals to co-operate or participate at least at the most basic level. ‘Popular will’ is an essential part of nations; for individuals to be members of a nation, they must be aware of it and be a party to it. In the words of Ernest Renan, a nation is a ‘daily plebiscite’ requiring the perpetual affirmation of it members.9 While some elements of national symbolism may be subconscious or subliminal, one cannot be a true member of a nation and not know it, identify with it, and understand at least some of the symbolism associated with it. ‘National’ meaning is only one of competing types of symbolic associations which can be used as a basis for defining group identity. Class, gender, race, religion (when not also a characteristic of a nation) are just a few of the categories which can also be thought of as imagined communities, with invented traditions and symbolic meaning attributed to cultural practices or historical events in certain circumstances. In some cases these may be compatible with national identities, and in some cases in conflict. For example, socialists may seek to have workers identify with the ‘workers of the world’ and not with the bourgeois of their nation, or separatist regions may wish to define a particular territory not as a region of a nation, but as an independent nation. In many cases there is no conflict whatsoever, and different kinds of group identity can be perfectly compatible one with another. In others, certain groups may be excluded from membership, even if they themselves would like to be a part of the nation. The most obvious example is the exclusion of particular racial or religious minorities, at least in terms of symbolic representation, if not by being denied certain rights, citizenship or worse, by the majority. In every case though, group identity implies an ability to identify those who are members of the group, and to distinguish them from those who are not members. Turning from national identity to nationalism, a wide variety of defini- tions have been put forward. These range from individuals and groups acting and thinking in ways which are, if not primarily determined by their relationship to a nation, then at least significantly influenced by it through to ‘an ideology or political religion, a political movement seeking state power, a cultural formation allowing industrial societies to function, a modern cognitive framework, a movement of cultural and historical

9 Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation? et autres essais politiques. textes choisis et pré- sentés par Joël Roman (Paris: Agora, 1992) [original 1882]. See also Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). introduction 7 revival, or a combination of these factors.’10 One can also think of it as the political expression of national identity, most often against the background of some kind of conflict. John Breuilly argues that it is within the context of power struggles to control modern states that nationalism has its potential as a political force able to mobilise, coordinate and legitimate certain claims for power. For him, nationalist thinking only has serious consequences when it is actively adopted by a political movement. In such an interpretation, the character and specific composition of any particular nationalist ideology will be determined by the structure of the state to which it is opposed and ‘closely related to the institutional framework within which the conflict took place.’11 Mark Hewitson extends the range of potential conflicts in which nationalism may arise beyond the political, elaborating a model with five sources of conflict and radicalisa- tion: ‘the rapid spread of capitalist production and disputes about distribution; democratisation and competition for power within representative polities; the existence of long-standing cultural differences in an era of changing means of communication; new levels and different kinds of state intervention; and a slow transformation of the European states system and conceptions of inter-state relations and warfare.’12 In such times of change, modernisation and conflict, national images and mythology have proven to be particularly powerful, since identification with them generated national identities in the name of which vast numbers of people have based a huge range of political, social, economic and military behaviours. It is the symbolic meaning of nations and the results of national identity in terms of political activity which are of particular interest in a comparison with folklore. Folklore, as we have seen, could be instrumentalised by nationalists, and was certainly promoted by nation-builders seeking legitimacy during the nineteenth century, but the growth in collection, dissemination and general interest in folklore can be attributed to other causes as well. More simply, it could also be used by other groups also seeking some kind of legitimacy, but folklore was also an object of scientific study and general fascination for many among the educated classes. Among examples of the former could be found the more overtly political or religious, such as the idealisation of the peasant world by republicans seeking to bring

10 Oliver Zimmer, Nationalism in Europe 1890–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), p. 5. 11 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), p. x, 44, 61, 115. 12 Mark Hewitson, “Conclusion”, in Baycroft and Hewitson, p. 315. 8 timothy baycroft republican-style ‘liberation’ to the countryside. Alternatively, folklore could be used to promote religious values, such as the Comtesse de Ségur’s Nouveaux contes de fées which were primarily interested in the moral or religious message of the fairy tales, rather than the particular culture in which they were situated, or the folk legends that sprang up around saints such as Saint Nicholas throughout much of Europe. Folklore could thus, as Terry Gunnell states later in this volume, acquire new levels of meaning, often national, but possibly other forms as well. Much of the work done on folklore during the nineteenth century was not overtly political in intent at all, and was undertaken because of a pure romantic interest in the people, or as a part of wider scientific investigations by those interested in sociology or anthropology such as they could be understood through the study of folklore, folk customs and traditions. In this sense the quest for authenticity was not primarily about political legitimacy, but about scientific accuracy, although the lines were often blurred between these two, as the individuals concerned had mixed motives. Many of the most well-known collectors of folk tales fall into this category, and were often as interested in the universal truths that could be understood through the return to the purity and authenticity of the people, as they were in understanding cultural particularlism. Among the most well-known, and those later associated with the development of national folklore, fall into this category—one thinks most immediately of the likes of Herder or the Grimm brothers, but it would equally include Lang or Müller. Taking the particular example of the Grimms, as specific authors they are mostly remembered for their contribution to their own national mythology, although they were also interested in cross- European, and indeed trans-oceanic traditions and folktales; this part of their oeuvre has tended to be forgotten, but was an important part of a tradition of nineteenth-century scholarship which crossed disciplinary boundaries such as we think of them today and drew upon a wide range of sources in their general investigation of society. Similar things could be said about several of the authors who will be looked at in some depth later in this volume, including George Sand, William Thoms, Vuk Karadžić and Giuseppe Pitré. After all, many of the traditions later associated with particular national cultures at one time were found all over Europe. A good example is the Dutch use of wooden shoes as a national symbol of the traditional Dutch peasant, although in fact wooden shoes were worn by the poorer classes all over the continent. This volume aims, in a modest way, to draw together some of the perspectives, methodologies and conclusions of scholars working on national- introduction 9 ism and folklore. It builds upon the theoretical work of Roger D. Abrahams and draws on work which has been done on specific countries, such as that of Michael Herzfeld on Greece or William A. Wilson on Finland.13 Much remains to be done, and this volume brings together a range of chapters covering many places and using a variety of methodologies. It begins with Joep Leerssen’s detailed examination of the Hasanaginica as a text, in which he contextualises its evolution and development (in the literary and political sense) within the wider European context of evolving national literatures, and the relationship of the oral to the literary in those national literatures. It is followed by Krisztina Lajosi’s chapter on nineteenth-century opera, in which she shows the way that the folk began to appear in the choruses of operas as active agents, illustrating the rising importance of the ‘national’ politically through this Europe-wide art form. Ilia Roubanis comparative essay examines the trends across many countries of the ways folkloric iconography on banknotes was used to try to foster a sense of national community within states. Peter Blundell Jones explores the ways in which styles which could be called ‘vernacular’ were incorporated into architecture, both in theory and practice, and the implications for the labelling of styles as local, national or indeed international. Two chapters follow on the material representations of the people. Firstly, Angela Schwarz examines national presentations of folklore at the great exhibitions of the late nineteenth century, showing the ways in which national authorities sought to use their pavilions to differentiate themselves in terms of folk culture one from another, in order to create what they hoped would be recognised (internally and externally) as distinctive national cultures. It is followed by Daniel DeGroff’s analysis of France’s attempts to create a national ethnography through museums, without the kind of success that could be seen in other countries such as Sweden. From the national to the regional, Anne Dymond then analyses Frédéric Mistral’s regional museum in Arles, illustrating the complexity of the relationship between regional and national discourses in France, and the potential tension surrounding the interpretation of folklore and its associated symbolism. Following a similar problematic, Detmar Klein examines the development of a culture-based regionalism in Alsace during the years of German annexation at the end of the nineteenth century. Clare

13 Abrahams, “Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism”, Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once more: Folklore, Ideology and the Making of Modern Greece. (New York: Pella, 1986), and William A Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (Bloomington ID: Indiana University Press, 1976). 10 timothy baycroft

O’Halloran’s chapter on Irish antiquaries and collectors then presents the ambiguities and potential conflicts which prevented the wholehearted nationalist use of folklore or the condemnation of peasant backwardness which were central to the Irish circumstances in the nineteenth century. Sara M. Hines probes further the question of the contradiction between universality and the specific so-called ‘national’ character of folktales through her investigation of the work of the nineteenth-century Scottish collector Andrew Lang, whose work as both collector and theorist illustrated this contradiction most pertinently. The next three chapters all deal with England. Firstly, Jonathan Roper challenges the widely-held perception that England had no folklore with a range of examples, particularly those of pastors on the vernacular. Chris Wingfield and Chris Godson contrast a world-oriented and nationalist-inspired anthropology and their results using the example of the Folklore Society in Britain and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. They show that approaches varied according to time and place, but that both perspectives are important to understand the evolution of studies of archaeology, anthropology and folklore at the end of the nineteenth century. David Atkinson’s analysis of the romantic ballad revival across Britain in the nineteenth century then shows that the quest for authenticity could in some ways be seen to challenge the nationalist presentation of the ballads, given the difficulties in tracing ballads to individual and clearly identifiable national origins. Moving northwards, Terry Gunnell’s study of folklore and theatre shows how the Icelandic case, solidly contextualised within wider Scandinavian movements, illustrates extremely clearly the complex processes of identification of particular works as ‘national’ traditions. The final two chapters are about Finland, beginning with Pertti Anttonen, who probes many dimensions of the process whereby culture became identified as national, showing how it was not simplistic and straightforward as has often been surmised in other studies of literary and political nationalism in Finland. This is followed by Vesa Kurkela’s study of folk music in Finland, which looks in particular at the ways in which sorrowful songs came to be viewed as representative of the nascent Finnish nation. ORAL EPIC: THE NATION FINDS A VOICE

Joep Leerssen

Romanticism does two contradictory things to the notion of authorship. On the one hand, the author becomes supremely individualistic, someone who creates out of a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling rather than by correctly and cleverly applying the approved thematic, poetical and rhetorical conventions; whose persona is that of Byron rather than Dr Johnson. On the other hand, there is a de-individualisation of the author: he is merely an Aeolian harp, responding to the vibrancies and inspirations that waft through him, who becomes de-individualised as he loses himself in an inspiration that is collective or spiritual rather than personal. In this sense, the poet can become the voice of his nation, and his role is (to echo James Joyce’s phrase, slightly ironically given to the adolescent idealist alter ego of Stephen Dedalus, in A Portrait of the Art- ist as a Young Man) to “forge the uncreated conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul”. The idea that the ‘nation’ is the collective author and articulator of a collective consciousness: that notion is what I wish to trace here, and the Romantic period, which celebrates the poet’s Self at the same time that it glorifies the collective folk effusions of popular balladry and fairytale, is a crucial period to scrutinise in this respect. The origin of this idea can be found in Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova of 1725, which posited the view that each nations enters the stage of world history in a ‘Big Bang’ of collective self-articulation involving, in one originary foundational moment, the crystallisation of its mythology, epic poetry, language, and law. These elements of human culture and cognition form, at that primal stage, an undifferentiated whole, and to study them a new kind of scientific endeavour is needed, one which Vico calls, not by the appellation of ‘philosophy’ but by the almost-neologism ‘philology’.1 A century later, the idea of philology as the study of cultural history involving language, literature, law and mythology has become widely

1 Generally on the conceptual history of philology, including the role of Vico: Pascale Hummel, Philologus auctor; Le philologue et son oeuvre (Bern: Lang, 2003). 12 joep leerssen accepted, as had the term of ‘philology’ itself, though almost no-one at the time still recalled Vico as the originator of this paradigm. The influence of Vico over romantic historicism by way of Herder is a somewhat shadowy one, on which I hope to throw some light towards the end of this article. The appreciation of collective-anonymous authorship is certainly a dominant attitude among early-nineteenth-century philologists. Thus, Wilhelm Grimm, when lecturing on the Nibelungenlied at the University of Göttingen, pointed out that the most valuable (and archaic) specimens of a national literature were the anonymous, epic fragments (Nibelungen- lied, Hildebrandslied, Otfried; and we might add Beowulf and the Chanson de Roland as analogues from English and French), while later chivalric romance, produced by authors individually known by name (Gottfried von Strasburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Chrétien de Troyes) are ener- vated, non-national and less impressive by comparison. The anonymous epic pieces “seem to belong to the nation at large, merely enunciated by a given individual” and “have a firm, well-demarcated content reared on a straightforward base,” while “courtly poets were not quite master of their material and topics and often confuse the foreign tales.”2 The rise of the vernacular literatures of Europe as ‘national literatures’ in the nineteenth-century sense involved in large part the retrieval and publication of these primeval epics. Where written documents were unavailable, however, the lacuna was often filled by the edition of oral material. The result is an interesting hybrid: not only does oral literature feed into the rising interest in folklore and the study of popular culture as a performative praxis; it also spills over into the concerns of literary history and the search for vernacular epics. To be sure, the notion of ‘oral epic’ is prima facie an oxymoron. The most exalted of literary genres, linked to the names of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Camões and Milton, was in the very root sense of the word literary, which is to say a written, literate genre. To see the quality of epic residing in the oral transmission of illiterate demotic performers required, in the early nineteenth century at least, some re-conceptualisation. How this reconceptualisation came about is linked to the extraordinary European reception history of an oral text from the Balkans, the Hasanaginica, in the years 1770–1825, reverberat- ing as it did against the then-current debates around Ossian, Homer and the anonymous-epic beginnings of vernacular literatures. Hasanaginica and its extraordinary reception trajectory demonstrates how the preoc-

2 Wilhelm Grimm, Nibelungenkolleg (ed. Else Ebel; Marburg: Elwert, 1985), 13. oral epic: the nation finds a voice 13 cupation with ‘nationally’ authentic popular culture was in fact a matter of transnational networks and European taste, as I hope to show in the following pages. I shall first present the case itself; then situate it on the pre-romantic connection between ‘ancient epic’ and ‘oral fragment’, and finally suggest how these issues can be traced across (while documenting the connections within) a network of philologists and literati that reaches back from romantics like Mérimée, Karadžić and Grimm to Herder, Macpherson, and ultimately Vico.

Hasanaginica In 1774 a travel account appeared in Venice, relating the journey undertaken by the priest-savant Alberto Fortis to the Adriatic coastlands of Dalmatia. Fortis’s Viaggio in Dalmazia presented to the Venetian public a rough, uncivilised country which lay within the Venetian sphere of control but whose manners and customs were unexplored and exotic.3 Fortis gave geographical and social details, including also an ethnographic chapter on the manners and customs of the uncouth Morlacks. This chapter was illustrated with a specimen of a local ballad, about the tragic fate of the wife of Hasan-Aga, a local warlord. The text is given on facing pages: the Croatian original on the left with an Italian translation on the right. The ballad itself counts 93 lines in a ten-syllable metre, and describes an incident which has been traced back to the Venetian-Ottoman wars of the 1650s. The warlord Hasan-Aga is suffering from wounds in his mountain encampment. His wife is too shy to venture out of purdah, leaving Hasan’s wife and sister to tend to him. For this she is repudiated and divorced by Hasan-Aga, sent back to her family who, to obviate their shame, marry her off to another. As her bridal train passes Hasan-Aga’s house, her children rush out, clamouring for their mother. On seeing them, she dies of a broken heart. The lament concerning this woman’s cruel fate, known as Hasanagi- nica, has become famous. Indeed, it has become a classic, and has left its mark both within the Slavic Balkan lands and (in many translations and adaptations) elsewhere.4 The international reception took place in

3 It has been reprinted as Alberto Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia (ed. P. Rehder; München: Sagner, 1994). An excellent analysis is given by Larry Wolff, Venice and the Slavs. The Dis- covery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). 4 A very extensive documentation of the reception record is given by Alija Isaković, (ed.) Hasanaginica 1774–1974 (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1975). 14 joep leerssen two stages and along two lines of dissemination, which cross tracks in the figure of Goethe. The first stage fans out from Venice in the 1770s. A French version of Fortis’s book appeared in 1774, and Hasanaginica was given a German prose rendition by the Swiss scholar Friedrich Werthes.5 This was shown to Goethe on his Swiss tour of 1775; Goethe was so impressed with it that he composed a German version in the poem’s native ten-syllable metre: Was ist weisses dort im grünen Walde? Ist es Schnee wohl, oder sind es Schwäne? Wär’ es Schnee da, wäre weggeschmolzen, Wären’s Schwäne, wären weggeflogen. Ist kein Schnee nicht, es sind keine Schwäne, ’s Ist der Glanz der Zelten Asan Aga; Niederliegt er drein an seiner Wunde. (What gleams white there in the green forest? / Could it be snow or maybe swans? / Were it snow it would have melted, and swans would have flown away. / It’s not snow, nor is it swans, / It’s the gleaming encampment of Hasan-Aga / where he lies prostrate suffering from his wound.) This version was subsequently included by Herder in the anthology of Volkslieder that appeared in 1778 (now generally known under its later title Stimmen der Völker in Liedern). This anthology, justly famous as a landmark in cultural relativism and early romantic appreciation of popular culture, sought to demonstrate that each nation had, alongside its own language, manners and customs, also its own poetical sensibility, innate, artless, and valuable in its own right. Herder famously triggered an interest in oral poetry and balladry (the German fashion for the Lied as a poetical and musical form would have been unthinkable without him), and for cultural variation in the teeth of classicist formal-thematic prescriptions. This view was outlined in his philosophy and cultural criticism, but the anthologies of Volkslieder were especially influential, and within those anthologies Goethe’s “Klaggesang der edlen Frau des Hasan-Aga” was the jewel in the crown. Goethe later also published it under his own name in his own verse collections. Hasanaginica knew a Europe-wide vogue with the Goethe/Herder version as a nodal point in the dissemination (Walter Scott’s version was

5 On Werthes: Rita Unfer Lukoschik, “Rezeption italienischer Literatur im Deutschland der Spataufklarung: Friedrich August Clemens Werthes (1748–1817)”, in Gelehrsamkeit in Deutschland und Italien im 18. Jahrhundert / Letterati, erudizione e societa scientifiche negli spazi italiani e tedeschi del ’-700, ed. G. Cusatelli, M. Lieber, H. Thoma & E. Tortarolo (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999): 111–126. oral epic: the nation finds a voice 15 based on Goethe’s); but some four decades later a new reception wave built up, its origin this time being, not a Venice-based priest, but a Bos- nian Serb who had taken refuge in Vienna. Vuk Stefanović Karadžić is famous for a number of achievements in the field of Serbian culture.6 He regularised the modern Serbian language on modern rather than Church- Slavonic principles, wrote its grammar and lexicographically codified its vocabulary and orthography, collected folklore and proverbs, and counted as the main conduit between the philological literati of metropolitan Europe and the living culture of the Serbian lands then involved in their anti-Ottoman insurrection. Stimulated by his mentor in Vienna, the Slovene-born savant Jernej Kopitar, he also published a collection of Serbian folk ballads in 1814–16. In these Srpske narodne pjesme he included Hasanaginica—although he had to rely on Fortis’s version for it, since he had not encountered any performance himself. (This may be due to the fact that it belonged to a female-sentimental repertoire sung by and for women, whereas Vuk mainly used a male-heroic repertoire.)7 Through his mentor, Jernej Kopitar, Vuk’s collection reached the ear of Jacob Grimm. The fact that Grimm learned Serbian in order to get a proper grasp of Vuk’s various works is a measure of the importance he attached to it. Indeed Vuk was a Serbian Grimm, covering the same philological and folkloristic fields, and the rugged authenticity of what Vuk brought before the public appealed to Grimm’s long-standing interest in the ways oral material could throw a light on the primitive pre-literate stages of a nation’s collective-poetic imagination.8 Grimm brought Vuk’s work up

6 From amidst the very sizable body of Vuk-related critical studies I mention only the English-language biography by Duncan Wilson, The Life and Times of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, 1787–1864: Literacy, Literature and National Independence in Serbia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). On Vuk’s mentor Kopitar: Antonia Bernard, “J. Kopitar, lien vivant entre la slavistique et la germanistique”, in Philologiques III. Qu’est-ce qu’une littérature nationale? Approches pour une théorie interculturelle du champ littéraire, ed. M. Espagne & M. Werner (Paris: Maison des sciences des l’homme, 1994): 191–209; Walter Lukan (ed.), Bartholomäus ( Jernej) Kopitar. Neue Studien und Materialien anläßlich seines 150. Todestages (Wien: Böhlau, 1995); Ingrid Merchiers, “Cultural Nationalism in the South Slav Habsburg Lands in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Scholarly Network of Jernej Kopitar (1780– 1844)” (doctoral thesis, University of Gent, 2005). 7 Aida Vidan, Embroidered with Gold, Strung with Pearls. The Traditional Ballads of Bos- nian Women (Cambridge, MA: Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, 2003). 8 On Vuk and Grimm: Vera Bojic, Jacob Grimm und Vuk Karadžić. Ein Vergleich ihrer Sprachauffassungen und ihre Zusammenarbeit auf dem Gebiet der serbischen Grammatik (München: Otto Sagner, 1977); Petra Himstedt-Vaid, “Rezeption der serbischen Volkslieder und ihrer Übersetzungen in der deutschen Presse in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhundert”, Zeitschrift für Balkanologie, 40.2 (2002): 121–140; Max Vasmer, Max (ed.), B. Kopitars Brief- wechsel mit Jakob Grimm (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1938). 16 joep leerssen with Goethe, who recalled his own verse rendition of the Hasanaginica forty years previously, and suggested that a good German poetry translation could be entrusted to ‘Talvj’, a young women of letters whose pseudonym was formed by her initials: Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob.9 Thus a second wave of fame began for the Hasanaginica. Interest was now national-exotic and Romantic rather than sentimental-antiquarian. Vuk’s oral epic counted as the voice of (and indeed as the proof of existence of) the Serbian Nation. The frontispiece to Vuk’s second edition (Leipzig 1824) shows the performing guzlar playing his one-stringed fiddle and chanting his verse as the representative of an entire community gathered around him. Talvj’s German translation was in turn translated into French (by Elise Voiart, as Chants populaires des Serviens, 1834) with a dedication to none other than François Guizot, the historian-statesman. The telescoping translations-based-on-other-translations crossed the Eng- lish Channel in 1861, when Owen Meredith (real name: Robert Bulwer- Lytton) brought out an English rendition based on Voiart’s French: Serbski pesme; or, National songs of Serbia.10 Voiart’s collection was of added importance in that it played into a general vogue for Balkan balladry. It combined Orientalist escapism with a political sympathy for the national uprisings against the Ottomans, and had been brought into fashion by Byron and specifically by philhellenism. One of the key texts of philhellenism, published in the year Byron died at Missolonghi, had been Claude Fauriel’s Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne—a title obviously providing Voiart with a genre template. Chants populaires—of the French-Flemish, of Bretagne, Languedoc—were to remain a frequent moniker for this type of endeavour, and the presiding genius of Guizot was never far away, be it as dedicatee of Voiart or as patron of Fauriel and others. The most curious spin-off occurred by way of another Guizot protégé: Prosper Mérimée. He had a Byronic taste for Mediterranean honour-and- shame material (witness his revenge tales of Colomba, set in Corsica, and of course Carmen, set in Andalusia) and yearned for a trip in Byron’s footsteps to the Illyrian part of the world, where Charles Nodier (whose

9 She later moved to America, where she gained fame under her married name as Therese Robinson. Cf. Irma Elizabeth Voigt, “The Life and Works of Mrs. Therese Robinson (Talvj)” (thesis, Urbana, IL, 1913). 10 By that time, an alternative French version had been brought out based directly on the Serb originals: Auguste Dozon, Poésies populaires serbes traduites sur les originaux (Paris 1859). The author worked at the French consulate-general in Belgrade. oral epic: the nation finds a voice 17 biography Mérimée would write) had briefly worked during Napoleon’s sway over the Venetian Adriatic coast (and from where that same Nodier had written on, and translated, Hasanaginica). That exoticism eventually found expression in a counterfeit collection of oral epic purportedly noted down from live performance in the region, from a guzlar improbably called Hyacinthe Maglanovich and obviously plagiarised and pastiched from Fortis, Nodier and Karadžić. La Guzla (which did include yet another Hasanaginica) was admitted by Mérimée to be something between a forgery and a practical joke by the 1840s—but by that time the harm had been done: Pushkin had fallen for the conceit, and had translated some material he believed genuine as part of his Pan-Slavic anthology Songs of the Western Slavs.11

From Pre-Romantic Sentimentalism to Romantic Historicism It should be repeated that the furore created by Greek and Serb folk balladry was qualitatively different from the interest of the 1770s. Herder’s anthropology of cultural diversity had been replaced by Grimm-style philology and historicism.12 For Jacob Grimm, fairytales, sagas and legend, indeed all collective-oral culture, constituted a window on archaic mythology and the early heroic stages of national development. Grimm’s various publications, with the word deutsch in the title of all of them, spell out a programme to come to grips with the German world-view and mindset through a study of languages (Deutsche Grammatik, Deutsches Wörterbuch), legal history (Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer) sagas and mythology (Deutsche Sagen, Deutsche Mythologie). And, as we have seen at the outset of this article, epic literature was linked to oral tradition in that both were authorless, collective, emanating from the nation-at-large. This meant that folk balladry gained important new status following Grimm; and here it is enlightening to return to Claude Fauriel, the editor of the Greek klephtic songs as collected in the Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne. When Fauriel—one of the Grimm adepts in early-nineteenth- century France—was appointed to the first, newly-created chair of litté- ratures étrangères at the Sorbonne, he began propounding a sense that

11 Voyslav M. Yovanovitch, «La Guzla» de Prosper Mérimée; Étude d’histoire romantique (Paris: Hachette, 1911). The tangled skein of competing French Hasanaginica translations and versions before and after La Guzla is unravelled in Isaković, Hasanaginica. 12 Generally my “Literary Historicism: Romanticism, Philologists, and the Presence of the Past”, Modern Language Quarterly 65.2 (2004): 221–243. 18 joep leerssen such balladry was, indeed, ‘oral epic’, that is to say, epic-heroic in scope and grandeur despite its non-literate orality. Fauriel had a special interest in the emergence of national literatures as recognisable presences of the world-historical stage. He was keen to trace the beginnings of Provençal literature from Gallo-Roman origins in the Middle Ages, and also believed that the oral-heroic songs collected from the Balkans were proto-epic components of a heroic literature in statu nascendi: much as the Greek and Serb nations were asserting their autonomous existence in the teeth of Ottoman rule and Metternich conservatism, so too their literatures were about to articulate themselves as full independent members of the European literary dramatis personae.13 Accordingly, Hasanagica, which for Herder had still been a sample of folk balladry, began to obtain epic stature. Oral epic in the Balkans was, in subsequent decades, to become a veritable marker of national existence and the right to national self-determination. Whereas the old states of Western Europe had documented their national existence in written epic (Beowulf, Chanson de Roland, Nibelungenlied, Edda etc.), the epic poetry of the Balkan lands was in a proto-epic oral run-up phase much as the nations themselves were only beginning to assert their national independence politically. The echoes of this philological view were to reach the ears of geopolitical high politics around the Paris Peace Conference. Presi- dent Wilson’s Fourteen Points programme of national self-determination relied, indirectly, on books like Leon Dominian’s The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe (1917), where we find passages like these, turning oral epic (the pjesme ballad) into a litmus test of nationality: The pjesme voices Serbia’s national aspirations once more in the storm and stress of new afflictions. Its accents ring so true, that the geographer, in search of Serbian boundaries, tries in vain to discover a surer guide to delimitation. From the Adriatic to the Western walls of the Balkan ranges, from Croatia to Macedonia, the guzlar’s ballad is the symbol of national solidarity. His tunes live within the heart and upon the lips of every Serbian. The pjesme may therefore be fittingly considered the measure and index of a nationality whose fibre it has stirred. To make Serbian territory coincide with the regional extension of the pjesme implies the defining of the Serbian

13 Miodrag Ibrovac, Claude Fauriel et la fortune européenne des poésies populaires grec- que et serbe. Etude d’histoire romantique, suivie du Cours de Fauriel professé en Sorbonne (1831–1832) (Paris: Didier, 1966); Brigitte Sgoff, “Claude Fauriel und die Anfänge der roma- nischen Sprachwissenschaft” (doctoral thesis, München 1994). oral epic: the nation finds a voice 19

national area. And Serbia is only one among many countries to which this method of delimitation is applicable.14 Thus far did the shadow of Vuk Karadžić reach, a full century after his collection of Serb folk balladry.

Anonymity and Provenance But where, finally, does a text like Hasanaginica come from? To say that it emanates from the people-at-large does not really provide us with hard data about actual provenance. How should we envisage such a collective generatio spontanea, and how should we imagine that Hasanaginica was dictated to, or transcribed by, or noted down for, Alberto Fortis? What was Fortis’s interest in a ballad that he had yet to hear or translate (or have translated for him)? Hasanaginica’s provenance is unclear. Fortis himself was not proficient in any of the South Slavic dialects. There must have been intermediaries, possibly a whole chain of them, ultimately reaching towards that vanish- ing-point which romantics saw in the ‘nation-at-large’. Literary historians have not reached consensus yet as to the precise nature of how native performance came to be translated into written canonicity for an outsider- audience. Whatever the precise nature of the posited provenance, the image is usually one of a transfer from orality and performativity towards written fixity, and from an in-group of demotic performers towards an exoteric audience of metropolitan literati. The process is one of codification and fixation. And even this image is romanticised. We are now more sensitive than in the Grimms’ days of the extent to which codification invariably must entail adaptation to a new medium or ambience, or even involving deliberate ‘folksification’ in successive renditions as, notoriously, the Grimms themselves did to their fairytales (or at least some of them). Nor are we now so blithely convinced that the diverse versions in circulation can or should be collapsed into a thematic Urtext from which each variant diverges and falls off, and into which the proper editor can reconstitute and reconcile them. The idea of reconciling and splicing variants and fragments is something of a romantic-historicist paradigm: it links the

14 Quoted in Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (New York: Praeger, 1960), 122–123. On the subsistence of such ethnic thought in Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” and in the Paris negotia- tions, see Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2003). 20 joep leerssen endeavours of Macpherson and Lönnrot, who each reconstructed epic wholes out of oral fragments, with the editorial method developed by Karl Lachmann (which reconstructs an ideal-putative Urtext from diverg- ing MS variants) and indeed Grimm-style philology (which extrapolates ancient language forms from the classification of subsequent diversifica- tion patterns). In folklore and manuscript-editorial studies, this paradigm is now losing ground. The variants in folk themes are now, following the pioneering structuralist re-thinking of Jakobson and Bogatyrev, considered to be a given, and in philology the essay by Bernard Cerquiglini aptly and provocatively entitled Eloge de la variante has turned against the fetish of the one and whole urtext.15 Another mechanism which has increasingly been brought into focus is that of re-oralisation: the extent to which written and oral-performative culture stands in a two-way osmosis, and that for every folktale transcribed into written canonicity another written text may be oralised into performers’ repertoires.16 The problematic provenance of Hasanaginica (which ultimately has no older authority than Fortis’s printed edition-with-translation, and no supporting evidence even from Karadžić) need therefore not be a cause for straightforward suspicion or unease. There are undoubtedly complexi- ties involved—possibly a separate feminine repertoire, in which case the transmission from that ambience to Fortis poses its own questions, and possibly also an intermediary ambience that partook both of literate print culture and of folk patterns such as the ten-syllable metre. Thus, some twenty years before Fortis undertook his voyage, the Franciscan monk Andrija Kačić-Miošić had published, from didactic motives of popular education, a national history of the Croat lands. This Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga or “Pleasant entertainment for the Slavic people” contained historical narratives aimed at simple people ignorant of Latin or

15 Roman Jakobson & Pyotr Bogatyrev, “Die Folklore als eine besondere Form des Schaffens”, in Donum natalicium Schrijnen. Verzameling van opstellen door oud-leerlingen en bevriende vakgenooten opgedragen aan mgr. prof. dr. Jos. Schrijnen bij gelegenheid van zijn zestigsten verjaardag 3 mei 1929 (Nijmegen & Utrecht: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1929): 900–913. Bernard Cerquiglini, Eloge de la variante. Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Seuil, 1989). 16 A cause célèbre is that of certain Blasket folktales which (after having initially been celebrated as reflecting themes as old as medieval European narrative in Western Irish isolation) turned out to have been derived from an English translation of Boccaccio Decam- erone. Cf. James Stewart, “Boccaccio in the Blaskets”, Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, 43 (1989): 125–140; Bo Almqvist, “The Mysterious Mícheál Ó Gaoithín, Boccaccio and the Blas- ket Tradition”, Béaloideas, 58 (1990): 75–140. oral epic: the nation finds a voice 21

Greek (the two liturgical languages of the main Christian denominations in the Balkans) and appeared in two editions in 1756 and 1759; these were printed in, precisely, Venice. The Razgovor gained widespread popularity. Significantly, Kačić-Miošić had attempted to make certain passages more appealing by casting them in the pjesme’s oral-performative ten-syllable metre, besides working actual oral ballad material into his own text. The boundary between oral performance and print culture obviously allowed for a good deal of two-way crossover, as is further demonstrated by the fact that certain portions of the Razgovor were included in Herder’s anthology. This means that situating the origin of Hasanaginica is made more complex by the fact that the parameters themselves are fluid and changeable. Some even speculate that it may be an ‘outtake’ from, or hybrid with a portion of, the Razgovor, printed as it was in Fortis’s home city and like Fortis’s text situated on the boundary between folk culture and clerical learning.17 And indeed the entire distinction between archaic oral ballad and high epic was becoming blurred and contested in precisely these decades as a result of the Ossianic scandal and the Homeric question.

Ossian and Homer; Homer and Macpherson The ‘Homeric Question’ is one of the most notorious philological or literary quandaries of the last centuries—like the Ossian scandal. It seems opportune to place them side by side. I need not go into detail concerning the notorious episode of Macpherson’s “Ossian”. Besides referring to some of the recent scholarship on the issue, it may suffice to recall how James Macpherson astounded the literary world in 1760 by unearthing fragments of ancient balladry orally handed down in the Highlands; that these fragments caught the literary imagination both because of their lofty, sublime melancholy and their patina of ancient, but forgotten heroes and civilisations. The purported author underwriting these fragments, Ossian, was deemed to have been a Highland bard from the third or fourth century AD, equal in epic stature to Homer and like him the author of two great epic poems. These were retrieved and reconstituted by Macpherson in the

17 Cf. Wolff, op. cit.; Albert B. Lord, “Nationalism and the Muses in the Balkan Slavic Lit- erature in the Modern Period”, in The Balkans in Transition. Essays on the Development of Balkan Life and Politics since the Eighteenth Century, ed. C. Jelavich & B. Jelavich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963): 258–296; Ante Franić, “Kako je Alberto Fortis mogao doči do «Hasanaginice»”, Radovi (Zadar), 1975–76: 115–131. 22 joep leerssen next years, published as Fingal and Temora and took European literature by storm—helped along to no small extent by (again!) Goethe, who inter- polated long passages in his success novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. There was, so Europe realised, another Homer, a Northern one. The Ossianic vogue lasted for a few decades—longer in some parts of Europe than in others. Its prestige crumbled between 1775 and 1800 under the critical scepticism as to the authenticity of Macpherson’s translations. By 1800 Macpherson was widely discredited as a forger. It left lasting traces, however.18 Most importantly for the present context, it alerted critics to the possible exchangeability between oral fragment and epic whole; and it gave fresh weight to certain speculations that possibly the Homeric epics themselves, with their formulaic repetitions and their episodic structure, might themselves be the result of a compilation rather than the premeditated and original creation of a single inspired individual. The chain of reasoning ran more or less as follows: “If Ossian is no Northern Homer, maybe Homer was a Southern Macpher- son.” The case was made to devastating effect in F.A. Wolf’s famous Prole- gomena ad Homerum of 1795.19 In this view, Homer was only the compiler of pre-existing rhapsodic fragments that circulated in oral performance. This view tied in with the previously mentioned preference among philologists for ‘national epics’ that were anonymous, and collective (almost like folktales and folksong). While it took away from the stature of Homer as the genius and origin-point of all literature, it boosted the prestige of what now became known as ‘oral epic’: orally performed material that was heroic and sublime in tone, and which came to be seen as the type of material which could constitute the elements later to coalesce into a full-length epic. This view had led to a conjoint interest in folk literature and textual scholarship. The great editor Karl Lachmann, leading light of ‘critical’ school of text editing both in Classics and in medieval German, tended to deconstruct the various manuscript variants of a given text into their

18 Some of these I have traced elsewhere: “Ossianic Liminality: Between Native Tradi- tion and Preromantic Taste”, in From Gaelic to Romantic: Ossianic Translations, eds. Fiona Stafford and Howard Gaskill (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 1–16. “Ossian and the Rise of Literary Historicism”, in The Reception of Ossian in Europe, ed. Howard Gaskill (London: Continuum, 2004), 109–125. 19 Reinhart Markner & Giuseppe Veltri (eds.), Friedrich August Wolf: Studien, Doku- mente, Bibliographie (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999). Cf also Wolf’s Briefe an Heyne: Eine Beilage zu den neuesten Untersuchungen über Homer (1797) and Kristine Louise Haugen, “Ossian and the Invention of Textual History”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 59 (1998): 309–327. oral epic: the nation finds a voice 23 component elements before realigning those into a idealised Urtext or textual ideal-type, the result frequently being a modular conglomerate of rhapsodic elements (the Nibelungenlied, for instance, he saw as consisting of seven separate heroic lays). Conversely, when Elias Lönnrot aligned the orally gathered Finnish lays of Väinamöinen and the search for the Sampo into the Kalevala, his enterprise was much more acceptable, and more candidly avowed, than in the days of Macpherson (whose procedure regarding the Ossianic fragments had, after all, not been all that dissimi- lar). Ancient texts and living folktale could both offer, in this view, a window on the archaic imagination and mythology of the distant ancestors. What is more, heroic lays and ‘oral epic’ came to be seen as the literary activity of nations in statu nascendi. Much as the material itself testified to something like an epic about to emerge, so too the literary communities were seen as ethnic groups about to make their entrance on the geopolitical scene as full-blown nations. This throws an intriguing sidelight on Fauriel’s interest in proto-epic and emergent literature: the intense philel- lenic interest in Greek klephtic songs coincided with the anticipation of a modern Greek rebirth from under Ottoman domination;20 and similarly, the folksongs collected and edited by Karadžić, including the Hasanagi- nica, were a testimony to the imminent self-articulation of an independent Balkan-Slavic nation. Thus the collecting of heroic lays became the next best thing to the text edition of a medieval epic. In Brittany, the Bal- tic countries and elsewhere,21 we see the study of oral literature dovetail with philology.

20 Cf Michael Herzfeld, Ours once more. Folklore, Ideology and the Making of Modern Greece (New York: Pella, 1986). 21 In Brittany there is the case of Hersart de la Villemarqué’s Barzaz Breiz, regarding which, cf. Jean-Yves Guiomar, “Le «Barzaz-Breiz» de Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué”, in Les Lieux de Mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora (Quarto ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 3: 3479–3514; and the relevant chapter in Mary-Ann Constantine, The Truth against the World: Iolo Mor- ganwg and Romantic Forgery (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007). On Breton-Finnish cross-currents, see Gaela Keryell, “The «Kalevala» and the «Barzaz-Breiz». The Relativity of the Concept of «Forgery»”, in Celtica Helsingiensia. Proceedings from a Symposium on Celtic Studies, eds. Anders Ahlqvist et al. (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarium Fennica, 1996), 57–104 and Bernhard Lauer, Bärbel Plötner & Donatien Laurent “Jacob Grimm und Th. Hersart de La Villemarqué: Ein Briefwechsel aus der Frühzeit der modernen Keltologie”, Jahrbuch der Brüder Grimm-Gesellschaft 1 (1991): 17–83. On Estonia and Kreutzwald’s Kalevipoeg, as well as the importance of Dainos in Latvia and Lithuania, see Paulius V. Subacius, “Inscribing Orality: The First Folklore Editions in the Baltic States”, in Editing the Nation’s Memory: Textual Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Dirk Van Hulle & Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 99–111. 24 joep leerssen

Ossian and Hasanaginica: A ‘Ricorso’ (or: Closing the Vico Circle) The role of Fortis’s edition of Hasanaginica in these developments is a pivotal one. Not only does its spread and success fortuitously ‘play into’ a generalised mood of appreciation for folksong as a potential form of ‘oral epic’—it played a formative role in the very emergence of that mood. There are, in fact, cross-currents linking the Scottish Highlands, where Macpherson found the Gaelic fragments which he forged into his Ossi- anic epics, and the Dalmatian mountains where Fortis obtained the Lay of Hasan Aga’s Wife. These two European regions, one in the extreme North-West, the other in the extreme South-East, separated by Danube, Alps, Rhine and North Sea, resemble each other in their marginality and position. Both were the rugged, uncivilised backwoods of an important, refined metropolis facing political decline. What Dalmatia was to Venice, the Highlands were to Edinburgh: a location close to the salons of intellectuals where primitivism and sublime landscape were immediately available. In this light, it becomes highly suggestive that Fortis’s expedition to Dalmatia was in part sponsored by Lord Bute, the Scottish magnate and one-time British Prime Minister who well into the 1770s maintained a stubborn belief in the authenticity of Macpherson’s ‘translations’ from the Ossianic ‘original’. Indeed Fortis’s book came out in two parallel editions, one Italian, the other English, with a fulsome dedication to His Lordship. This in itself should suffice to alert us to the fact that, much as the fame of Hasanaginica spread far and wide, in repeated waves of appreciation, across an enthusiastic European readership, so too part of its inherent interest (and indeed its very availability) may have resulted from a Europe-wide fashion: for undiscovered epic grandeur slumbering in the disregarded vernaculars of remote rugged peripheries. The Ossianically-inspired subtext to Fortis’s Hasanaginica presentation is borne out by the conduit between Bute and Fortis: Melchiorre Cesarotti. Cesarotti, a friend of Fortis’s, was also the one who, sponsored by (again) Bute, had translated Ossian into Italian; indeed, Cesarotti’s translation was an important one, in that it in turn was the basis on which many subsequent translations into other European languages had been based. And the name of Cesarotti (an outstanding ‘networker’ possessing a wide circle of correspondents in European countries, including Ireland)22 closes a circle and establishes a firm ‘paper trail’ of intellectual influences linking

22 Emilio Bigi, Dal Muratori al Cesarotti 4: Critici e storici della poesia e delle arti nel secondo settecento (Milano: Ricciardi, 1960). Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, “Joseph Cooper Walker, oral epic: the nation finds a voice 25 the cluster of Herder, Fortis, Ossian, Karadžić/Grimm and F. A. Wolf back to the shadowy Neapolitan who preconceived all these attitudes: Giam- battista Vico. For Cesarotti had been a pupil of Vico’s, and his annotations to his Italian Ossianic translation breathe the spirit of the Scienza Nuova. This network around Fortis’s Journey to Dalmatia links the living folklore of the Balkans to the intellectual spread of new ideas on the origins of literatures, cultures and nations. The network of actors involved in Fortis’s journey, and the meandering deltas of Hasanaginica’s international dissemination, are intrinsically important and interesting. For one thing, they bring together various anti- Enlightenment strands (Vico, Macpherson, Herder, Wolf) into a network linked by actual influences and exchanges, rather than merely aligned by temperamental parallels; and they prove that cultural history is shaped, not by abstract forces and mentalities but by actual instances of communication and transmission. What is more, the case shows how thoroughly international and transnational the process of national re-discovery was. The preoccupation with vernacular demotic, native roots was not a reflex pursued in each country separately as an individual, separately spontaneous reaction of anti-cosmopolitanism (though this is how matters are often represented in mono-national studies of the period); it was, rather, a transnational vogue, an epidemic transmitted from one roaming text or intellectual to another. Finally, the case shows the importance of intellectuals as active shapers of collective attitudes. But beyond these intrinsic points of interest, there is yet more. From the 1810s onwards, all men of letters of the new academic generation were calling themselves ‘philologists’; a remarkable appellation since its original use meant something like ‘erudite pedantic book-lover’. The new philologists were different from eighteenth-century antiquarians and savants in that they were thoroughly imbued with the new mind-set of historicism. But they were the inheritors, without realizing it, of Vico, both in their self-appellation and in their academic programme. For men like Jacob Grimm, philology was a holistic study of the development of national cultures, as evinced in their mythology, folklore, legal systems, literary heritage and linguistic structures. Philology embraced the study of fairytales and of ancient epics, and saw no oxymoron in the idea of ‘oral epic’ as long as it referred to something illustrative of the aboriginal imagination

James Macpherson agus Melchiorre Cesarotti”, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 17 (2002): 79–98; Gustavo Costa, “Melchiorre Cesarotti, Vico and the Sublime”, Italica, 58 (1981): 3–15. 26 joep leerssen and Weltanschauung of the nation in question. And both the word ‘philology’ and the culture-anthropological programme it denoted—something which the classical philologist August Boeckh called the “Erkenntnis des Erkannten”, the understanding of how understanding works—were derived from the programme and world-view outlined by Vico in his Sci- enza Nuova: filologia as counterpart to filosofia, the study of a man-made cognitive environment as opposed to the study of the objective universe. Vico himself was forgotten by 1800, and reached posthumous European fame only in subsequent years; but the influence of his thought on romantic historicism and on the remarkable philological connection between folklore and literary history, between oral and epic, may be traced through the paper trail outlined here. SHAPING THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY OPERAS

Krisztina Lajosi

The Quest for a Voice In Krzysztof Kieślowski’s movie entitled Blue (1993)—the first piece of the Three Colours Trilogy (Blue / White / Red)—the plot revolves around the endeavour of several characters to finish “The Symphony for the Unifica- tion of Europe”. According to the story, this symphony had been commissioned by France’s greatest composer, who died in a car accident at the beginning of the film. The musical piece in question was supposed to be a huge concerto for twelve orchestras representing the twelve European nations in the Union. The text of the chorus would be sung in Greek and it would be a musical adaptation of the biblical First Epistle to the Cor- inthians (1 Corinthians 13: 4–13) also known as St. Paul’s Hymn to Love. The main characters seek to complete the musical artwork from different scattered fragments left in manuscript, but they are not even able to reconstruct the central theme. The quest for finding “the voice of Europe” eventually ends when the composer’s wife, Julie, liberated from the self- imposed prison of her grief following the terrible loss of her family, allows the biblical text of the song to “speak with the tongues of angels” in the chorus. The ending suggests that the song of multinational unity requires transcending the human condition. However, the context of the film immediately raises a few questions about this harmonious denouement. Is this musical piece European— multinational or transnational—or a tribute to the French nation? The trilogy’s title explicitly refers to the French flag (blue, white and red), the symbol of the French nation. Kieślowski intended this work to be a reflection on the French Revolution’s three-words-slogan: Liberté, égalité, fra- ternité! In the film it is suggested that the song of unification transcends national borders. But what actually happens is that in spite of the Euro- pean song’s ‘neutral’ Greek language, which refers to the roots of European civilisation, the European concerto is in fact French. It was commissioned by a Frenchman, subtly suggesting that the modern bedrock of European culture is in France. Eventually the song of European unification is going 28 krisztina lajosi to be finished by Julie, a French woman, whose personal story in the film is supposed to be the allegory of liberty. This might recall the central woman figure of Delacroix’s painting Liberté, an allegory of the French revolutionary spirit. With all its symbolic layers and allusions, Kieślowski’s movie is firmly grounded in French cultural space, thus in fact the imaginary festiv- ity for the unification of Europe becomes a monumental commemoration and celebration of France. In Blue we hear the sound of the voice of the people and we can listen to fragments of the immense chorus, but we cannot see the actual singers. The whole film, in spite of its articulated public interest—the comple- tion of the European concerto—remains confined to the private sphere of Julie and follows her individual drama. The viewer encounters only a few characters, and no crowd scene is shown in the film. We can hear the chorus, but we cannot see it. Thus Kieślowski’s movie, even though it is par excellence French and plays with the symbols of the French Revolu- tion, still remains an individual human drama. In this respect it is just the opposite of nineteenth-century operas, in which public matters overruled the concerns of private life and instead of individual dramas the stories focused on the destiny of a whole nation.

Opera and the Voice of the People The popularity and social impact of the opera in nineteenth-century Europe can be compared to the role of the film in our age. While in our time opera might seem a marginal art form, the entertainment of a few aficionados, in the nineteenth century it was actually a kind of mass media. It became more available to the public than ever before. In earlier centuries opera was the entertainment of the nobility and was founded and financed either by royal courts or wealthy aristocrats; whereas in the nineteenth century, public opera houses were built all over Europe.1 Besides the nobility, the audience now also included the ever-growing strata of the bourgeoisie and cosmopolitan intelligentsia. What earlier had been the symbolic space of the aristocracy, in the nineteenth century became also inhabited by the ‘common people’. No wonder that before the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, the Opéra had to be closed as the revolutionary public regarded it an ideologi-

1 Before the nineteenth century there were only a few public opera houses in Europe. One of the best -known was the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, which opened in 1637, and the one in Hamburg, which opened in 1678. But these were exceptions to the rule. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 29 cal stronghold of the Ancien Régime. The crowd demanded that all performances be cancelled. When it reopened, the themes of the performances changed radically. Instead of libretti that celebrated beloved monarchs, virtuous aristocrats and moral clergymen, stories of brave commoners, rescues from evil officials, and struggles against the Church authorities gained ever more space in the repertory. “So strong was opera’s influence that the French insurgents felt the need to block its conservative message and replace it with performances that advanced their revolutionary program.”2 The Belgian revolution of independence in 1830 began after a performance of Auber’s opera La muette de Portici in Brussels. It has been claimed that during the time of the Risorgimento the insurgents used the name of the Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi, as an acronym for the slogan Vittorio Emannuelle Re d’Italia in order to disguise its obvious political message from the authorities, which nevertheless, was immediately understood by the public who had already come to cherish Verdi as a national symbol. In 1843, after the first hugely successful performance of Verdi’s I Lombardi in Milan, the chorus “O Signore, dal tetto natio” was immediately adopted as an unofficial patriotic anthem; a year earlier the public had embraced the chorus “Va pensiero” from Nabucco for the same purpose. The authorities were well aware of the effect of the operas on the people so theatres in general were under careful supervision all over Europe. The attention that censors accorded to theatre performances was far more stringent than the restrictions imposed on printed belle-lettres. For example when an Austrian censor forbade the performance of a Hungar- ian play with nationalistic overtones—József Katona’s Bánk bán (1819)— nevertheless, he allowed it to be published in print.3 Verdi also had to change the settings of his Un ballo in maschera (1859), because the censors would not allow him to present a scene of regicide on the stage. Origi- nally the opera was based on the true story of the murder of Gustavus III of Sweden, who was shot at a masked ball in Stockholm on 16 March 1792. Because on 14 January 1858 Felice Orsini made an attempt on the life of Napoléon III, the authorities of Bourbon-ruled Naples disapproved of Verdi’s opera. At first Verdi refused to make any changes, and the

2 Theodore K. Rabb, “Opera, Musicology, and History”, Journal of Interdisciplinary His- tory 36/3, (2005): 322. 3 László Orosz, “A cenzor figyelme”, A Bánk bán értelmezéseinek története, (Budapest: Krónika Nova, 1999), p. 18. 30 krisztina lajosi performance of Un ballo was cancelled, which caused upheavals among the people and thousands of protesters went to the streets of Naples cry- ing out “Viva Verdi!”. Verdi’s decision not to compromise with the authorities was seen as a symbolic act of resistance against the oppressing power. However, later Verdi altered the settings of the opera for a performance in Rome. He relocated it from Stockholm to the distant Boston, and the social position of the protagonist to be killed at the end was changed from king to a colonial governor. Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz became associated with the performance of the German spirit on the stage, partly due to the fact that it was the opening performance of the Neue Schauspielhaus in Ber- lin conceived by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841). In that design the royal box had disappeared, suggesting the new ideals of a more liberal society. By widening the traditional horseshoe-shape stage into a broader scene the actors also came closer to the audience. In this way the audience could ‘inter-act’ with the players and experience the feeling that they themselves were also ‘in the play’. The success of the opening performance in Schinkel’s new theatre had almost been guaranteed from the beginning by its architectural design. The convivial atmosphere (Gemütlichkeit) and folk-like character of Der Freischütz were literally brought closer to the people by innovative architecture.4 In Hungary, a public debate known as the ‘opera war’ broke out in the 1840s between radical patriots who preferred traditional prose theatre and the opera-loving public. Because opera was considered by some critics a cosmopolitan art form, a large part of the theatre-going public was afraid that the cultivation of the opera would lead both to the bankruptcy of the prose theatre (set up in the service of nationalistic goals), and to the decay of national consciousness. However, the opera-loving public had its say and by the revolution of 1848 every performance given at the national theatre was an opera. During the revolution and war of independence in 1848–1849 the choruses from Ferenc Erkel’s operas were adopted as patriotic anthems of the national movements sung by thousands of anti- Habsburg protesters. The audience had often interrupted the prose the-

4 Margaret King, “Opera and the Imagined Nation. Weber’s Der Freischütz, Schinkel’s Neues Schauspielhaus and the Politics of German National Identity”, in Suzanne M. Lodato, Suzanne Aspden and Walter Bernhart, eds, Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage, Word and Music Studies, vol. 4, (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 217–228. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 31 atre performances during the days of the revolution demanding patriotic songs from the actors.5 How and why did opera gain such importance in the nineteenth century? To begin with, the general political and social trends of the day were represented in these operas. Instead of gods (Orpheo), kings (L’incoronazione di Poppea) or aristocrats (Don Giovanni) nineteenth-century operas presented the life of common people often tormented by aristocratic or royal oppression (Fidelio) or entire nations suffering from a tyranny (Guillaume Tell, Don Carlo, Nabucco). The libretti, the musical texture and the settings also played a vital role in popularising opera all over Europe. While earlier the language of the libretti was either Italian or French and rarely German, from the early nineteenth century the textual component of the operas were written in new vernacular languages: Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Croatian, Serb, Greek, Danish or Swedish. The music intentionally drew on local folksongs or dances that also enhanced the spirit of the public who recognised their everyday rites and entertainment presented on the stage as ‘high art’. The setting of the plots was deliberately folk-like, imitating village life, reflecting the local culture and rustic nostalgia of the public. All these factors contributed to diminishing the gap between the stage and the audience, between high culture and low culture, the people’s life and the representation of their everyday reality. In part because the audiences consisted increasingly of members of the bourgeoisie and even craftsmen, and also in the course of developing national awareness, the aristocracy and intelligentsia turned more and more towards folk culture either by patronising collections of folksongs or by producing works of art in the manner of the folk. However, one must not forget that in spite of the democratic opening of this formerly aristocratic status symbol, the pictured village life was just as distant from the everyday reality and experience of the audiences as it was from the actual rural milieu of the time. The operatic representation of ‘folk culture’ was an aesthetic construction of the exoticised voice of the people. But then opera was more than just a representation of socio-political reality: it actually functioned as an active agent influencing the political atmosphere of the time. As a commercial medium it reflected the shift in public demand as much as it shaped the taste of the new, mainly bourgeois, audience.

5 György Székely and Ferenc Kerényi, eds, Magyar színháztörténet 1790–1873 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), pp. 352–353. 32 krisztina lajosi

National Opera and the ‘Folk’ The 1980 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians includes a definition of national opera in the chapter about “Slavonic and National Opera”, claiming that national operas satisfied the hunger for national heritage with folk music and libretti based on national history, myth, legend, and peasant life. The 2001 edition of The New Grove reduces the treatment to half a page on “National Traditions” and no longer suggests a strong connection between national operas and Slavonic peoples.6 The association of national operas with Eastern Europe and Slavic cultures is not completely unjustified, since the nineteenth century was indeed the age of cultural emancipation of many ethnic groups that formerly had been incorporated in one of the big European super powers like the Ottoman or the Habsburg empire, and the majority of these small nations striving for independence were indeed of Slavic origin. However, the restriction of national operas to Slavonic nations is very simplistic because the endeavour to establish a canon of national musical style was a general European concern. From Italy and Spain to Germany, and from Hungary to Finland, many composers were striving to create national operas and symphonies and men of letters wrote treatises on the ways of representing national culture in art music.7 Volkstümlichkeit (‘folksiness’) was a characteristic of most of the late eighteenth-century music, especially in the opera buffa, where folk motifs were used to imitate and express couleur locale that was associated with idyllic peasant life and pastoral scenery. The musical vernacular of peasant figures and the musical lingua franca for all the other characters in operas still reflected a ‘horizontal’ view of society, in which class rather than nation was the determining factor of communal identity. However, as soon as folklore and language were considered essential elements of a ‘vertically’ defined nation, their cultural value increased. And so did the stock of national culture soar in general, since it became a core issue for the newly born public sphere and a recurrent topic of political discourse. Before the nineteenth-century the judicial concept of the nation was based on aristocratic ancestry and excluded

6 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. vol. 17 (London: Macmillan, 2001), pp. 689–707. 7 For example: Giuseppe Mazzini, Filosofia della Musica (1836); Richard Wagner, On German Opera (1834), On German Music (1840), Art and Climate (1841), What is German? (1878); Franz Liszt, Of the Gypsies and of their Music in Hungary (1859); Felipe Pedrell, Por nuestra música (1891). shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 33 the rest of society. For example for centuries—since the Golden Bull from 1222, the Hungarian equivalent of the Magna Carta—‘the Hungar- ian nation’ denoted only the members of the nobility, who had special rights and privileges. In the course of the nineteenth century the concept of the nation began to change and became more democratic, including all the people speaking the same language and sharing the same cultural heritage. This shift of paradigm might be explained partly with the impact of the ideals of the Enlightenment about the equality of the people, and partly by the importance accorded to national cultural awareness by the European intelligentsia. In addition to these alterations in cultural consciousness, the composition of the audiences also changed significantly compared to the previous centuries. After the Napoleonic Wars—especially in German cities, but also elsewhere in Europe and Britain8—music gained more and more space and significance in the public sphere. The number and the level of involvement of civic organisations and societies in the practice of music and the spreading of musical culture were unprecedented. Although aristocratic patronage did not completely vanish during the nineteenth century, musical institutions and events were dominated by the members of the bourgeoisie. During the first half of the nineteenth century the basic structure of conservatory education was also established which set the standards for professional music making. Before 1848 the public of art music consisted mainly of individuals who practiced music—that is both played and composed music—at home. The professionalization of concerts went hand-in-hand with a thriving amateur musical life: choral societies, musical clubs and journals mushroomed all over Europe.9 The active amateurism manifested itself also in the passion for collecting folksongs. Herder coined the word Volkslied [folksong] in 1778, and he was among the early collectors of rustic or peasant songs. He published them in a two-volume anthology entitled Volkslieder (1778–79), better known now by the title of the second (1807) edition Stimmen der Völker [Voices of the Peoples]. In Germany Herder was followed by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, who edited another collection of folksongs, Des Knaben Wunderhorn [The Youth’s Magic Horn] between 1805–1809. The collecting efforts of the brothers Grimm eventually gave a European

8 See William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2004). 9 Leon Botstein, Listening through Reading: Musical Literacy and the Concert Audience, 19th-Century Music, Vol. 16, No. 2, (1992), pp. 129–145, 134. 34 krisztina lajosi impetus to an unprecedented passion for folklore, and to a national culture supported mainly by the bourgeoisie. Many composers also became interested in collecting folk music. For example the work of the Polish composer, Oskar Kolberg (1814–1890) was unprecedented in Europe: he collected more than 15,000 melodies, of which he published almost 9,000 in 33 volumes between 1865 and 1890.10 But maybe the most prominent figures were the Hungarian composers Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967), who published various volumes of Hungarian, Roma- nian and Slovakian folksongs in the early twentieth century. Although the representation of the nation and the folk became an important issue in instrumental music—especially in programme music and musical landscape painting such as Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasies, Albé- niz’s Iberia or Sibelius’s Finlandia—it was the national opera that triggered the most heated public debates and became the locus of social and political upheavals. Opera became a major site for the expression of cultural nationalism. People did not start a revolution after reading a poem or a novel, but some uprisings did actually begin in theatres and opera houses. If Marshall McLuhan was right that “the medium is the message”, we may ask, what was the message of these operas, and why could no other art form compete with their immense popularity?11 The romantic exaltation of music was certainly one of the important factors. Music as medium acquired complex ideological aspects during the nineteenth century since it became the topic of philosophical treatises including Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, where music is seen as the highest form of art because, according to Schopen- hauer, it is not only a representation of thought but its embodiment, the direct manifestation of the will; and Nietzche’s The Birth of Tragedy, in which Nietzsche argues that the Dionysian element was to be found in the music of the chorus. In addition, musical practices gained more and more importance in the everyday life of the bourgeoisie either in the form of listening, or as actual music-making. Playing an instrument and singing in a choir was regarded as a symbol of social status and education. Until the nineteenth-century much of the control of musical creation and the possibility to hear certain types of music was restricted to the aristocracy, but

10 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (Grove Music Online, accessed at: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/15280?q=Kolberg& search=quick&pos=3&_start=1#firsthit, on 29-05-2009). 11 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (London & New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 7. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 35 in the course of the century it became available to a large public. Musical associations, choral societies and festivals were flourishing all over Europe and their repertories included folk music as well. These societies assumed more and more an extra-musical, political role too, and they became the hothouses for the cultivation of nationalistic ideologies.12 The other reason for the popularity of the operas was a political ideology that had already gained importance in theatrical practice: the liberal claim that a legitimate state should be built on ‘the people’ rather than on God, a dynasty or imperial domination. Romantic ethnic nationalism and liberal civic nationalism both played an important role in the nation-building movements of the nineteenth century.13 What were the institutional and historical causes for developing the theatre and opera into a cultural and psychological ‘factory’ of ethnic and civic cohesion and self-image? According to George Steiner, we cannot understand the Romantic movement unless we recognise the impulse towards drama and dramati- sation in general.14 Shelley argued in his Defence of Poetry that since drama is the authentic expression of a nation’s soul the decline of dramatic art marks the decline of the nation: And it is indisputable that the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the extinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished is a mark of a corruption of manners, and an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles.15 Nineteenth-century thinkers reached back to the ancient Greeks, where drama, especially tragedy, was regarded as a highest form of cultural practice, and wished to transform the theatre into such a public forum as in antique Greece. Architects like Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) and Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) designed theatre buildings in ancient Greek style—witness the Neues Schauspielhaus in Berlin, or the theatre in

12 Cecelia Hopkins Porter, “The New Public and the Reordering of the Musical Estab- lishment: The Lower Rhine Music Festivals, 1818–67”, 19th-Century Music, vol. 3, No. 3, (1980): 211–224. 13 See Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson, eds., What is a Nation? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 14 George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 108. 15 Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry”, English Essays: Sydney to Macaulay, Har- vard Classics, vol. 27, (New York: Bartleby, 2001), p. 27. 36 krisztina lajosi

Dresden—and published influential theories on the relation and importance of Greek architecture and nation-building.16 Georg Lukács argued that from the point of view of nation-building the public character of drama and its direct impact on the spectators was the great advantage of the historical drama over the historical novel.17 He pointed out that dramatic portrayal makes man much more the centre of the story than the epic. He quoted Schiller, according to whom the direct effect is more crucial to drama than to epic: “The action of drama moves before me, I myself move round the epic which seems as it were to stand still.”18 While the reader of the epic has greater freedom of interpretation, the spectator of the drama is totally dependent on theatrical effects. Opera as a multimedia art form could enhance this dramatic effect. Per- formance could mobilise the historical awareness of the nineteenth century, especially the staging of opera, which, more than traditional theatre, had music and singing in its favour. Above all, it was the chorus, a mass of people singing together, that represented the most obvious liaison between life and drama, audience and stage. Hundreds of minor composers wrote part-songs for choral societies, although from an aesthetic point of view the most valuable contributions came from Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. Schumann wrote in a letter to his friend Keferstein: “I am at present writing nothing but music for the voice, on both a large and small scale besides quartets for male voices.”19 Richard Taruskin emphasises the significance of singing culture, especially the cultivation of the German lied, in the development of national operas and national music in general.20 The Lied, a typical German product, was characterised by Empfindsamkeit [sensibility] and Volkstümlichkeit], binding together the romantic I with the We. A Berlin lawyer, Christian Gottfried Krause (1719–1770) described for the first time the nature and and significance of the Lied in a book Von der musikalischen poesie [On Musical Poetry] (1752) that actually anticipated the genre itself. Krause’s friend C. P. E. Bach, who read the book, began to furnish the theory with

16 See Gottfried Semper’s Die vier Elemente der Baukunst (1851), Vorläufige Bemerkun- gen über bemalte Architectur und Plastik bei den Alten (1834) or Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Sammlung architektonischer Entwürfe (1820–1837), Werke der höheren Baukunst (1840–1842; 1845–1846). 17 Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (London: Merlin Press, 1989), p. 130. 18 Ibid., p. 132. 19 Brinkman, p. 20. 20 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 119–120. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 37 more than two hundred liedern. As Taruskin points out, the popularity of the German romantic Lied was “decidedly a cultivation, a hothouse growth”. These Lieder were meant for home entertainment, and thus simple and relatively easy to disseminate. But the German Lied was just one genre of the singing culture of Romanticism. The French romance, the English ballad or the Italian canzonettas and cavatinas were just as popular. They existed in two variants: a ‘vernacular’ and an ‘artificial’, the latter of which tended towards complexity. It is worth mentioning however, that the word Lied became a loan word in French for the artistic song, whereas Romanze entered German as a term for salon songs of a lesser aesthetic value.21 These songs were rarely directly quoted in operas; nevertheless, their popularity inspired composers of national operas, who tried to write melodies in the manner of the folk to give their works a national flavour. According to Carl Dahlhaus: . . . from a compositional standpoint, it was easier in an opera than in a symphony to realise the concept of national style, inasmuch as vernacular music was presupposed to reside in folksong. After all, folk melodies resist symphonic manipulation . . . whereas they can easily be incorporated into an opera, where the resultant unavoidable fractures in style can be justified as fulfilling dramaturgical functions in the plot.22 It was the choral music that meant the greatest step towards romantic nationalism, since it could unite people both physically and mentally.23 Choral music was less frequently sung in the church, as in medieval times, but rather in public spaces. The roots of nineteenth-century choral festivals can be traced back to the massive oratorio performances of Handel commemorations in eighteenth-century England, which were performed outside the Church and attracted masses of people. It was symbolic that Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg displaced the song contest from the church to the Festival Meadow and that the final legitimation did not come from the church or town officials, nor from the tradition of the tabulatur, but from the Volk. After the French Revolution, the people, the nation and the nation-state replaced God and the King in

21 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, J. Bradford Robinson trans., (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1989), p. 104. 22 Dahlhaus, p. 218. 23 Dietmar Klenke, Der singende ‘Deutsche Mann’: Gesangvereine und deutches National- bewusstsein von Napoleon bis Hitler (Münster: Waxmann, 1998). 38 krisztina lajosi popular imagination.24 The former rituals and state ceremonies were filled with a different kind of secular and national content. Folk and Art became sacralised concepts in a romantic redefinition: Romantic choral music was associated not only with Gemütlichkeit, the conviviality of social singing, celebrated in the Männerchor texts for which Schubert had supplied such a mountain of music, but also with mass choral festivals—social singing on a cosmic scale that provided European nationalism with its very hotbed.25 Philip Bohlman also points out that the cult of singing helped to spread the idea of nineteenth-century national music and opera. He argues that epic songs and ballads were proto-national genres. The epic “is the story of the proto-nation”, represented through the deeds of “the individual whose heroism mobilizes the nation and whose leadership provides a metaphor for the nation’s own coming of age.”26 The epics chronicle the longue durée history of the nation. The ballads are the stories of the individuals and events that form together a national mosaic. National operas combine both of these two forms, because they usually recount an important historical event by focusing on the life-story and psychological struggle of an individual (Guillaume Tell, Aida). For example the first Romanian national opera, Mihai Bravul în ajunul bătăliei de la Căugăreni [Michael the Brave in the Battle of Călugăreni] (1848) by Johann Andreas Wachman (1807–1863) was based on the well-known story about the struggle of the Wallachian prince, Mihai Viteazul (1558–1601) against the Turkish invaders which had been recorded in numerous ballads. Later in the nineteenth century, however, at the height of nationalism, the figure of Mihai was transformed from a brave patriotic military leader into a ‘national saint’, because in 1600 for a short period he united Wallachia, Moldova and Tran- sylvania, the three independent suzerainties which, following the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, would become united again.

24 Yet religious practices and processions—in Lourdes, Fatima or Marpingen—also played an important role in the life of many people. For example in Marpingen, in 1876, at the height of the Kulturkampf, the alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary led to much tension between the people who flocked to Marpingen and the Prussian government. (See David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany, (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1994). Nevertheless, the effect ‘secular saints’—like national poets or composers—had on the public was a new cultural phenomenon and its impact was comparable to religious worship. 25 Taruskin, p. 162. 26 Philip V. Bohlman, The Music of European Nationalism. Cultural Identity and Modern History (Oxford: ABC CLIO, 2004), p. 37. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 39

In Germany and Austria the Singspiel, the vernacular comic opera, which was probably a descendant of the English ballad-operas, represented primarily romantic Volkstümlichkeit and Gemütlichkeit. In France, England and Germany, countries with a flourishing theatrical tradition, simple musical numbers, tunes well known to the folk were inserted into the spoken dialogues, thus adding to the entertainment value of the plays and making them popular. For example the songs from Hiller’s Lot- tchen am Hofe (1767), Die Liebe auf dem Lande (1768) and Die Jagd (1770) achieved a lasting popularity and later were treated as ‘folksongs’.27 As Taruskin points out, only a character ‘simple’ enough could sing these simple songs, which resulted in an unprecedented increase in rural settings. Before the advent of nineteenth-century nationalism, peasants and common people on the stage represented only their class, not their country. In Lortzing’s comic opera Zar und Zimmermann [Tsar and Car- penter] (1837), a work that raises many social issues, the Russian fugitive soldier Peter Iwanow becomes in the end the official representative of his country, but only because of the Tsar’s benevolence. Iwanow is not yet the representative of the people. His acts are only motivated by the personal intent to marry the girl he loves. In contrast, Ivan Susanin in Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar (1836) already acts in the name of his people and is ready to sacrifice his life to help the Tsar. Contrary to the ‘simplicity’ of the German comic Singspiels, the operatic stage became in France the place for re-enacting the nation’s history. Tragedy was the most suitable genre for this purpose. In the period of the July Monarchy (1830–48) the Académie Royale became the site of the monster opera-spectacles. In these grand operas—beginning with Rossi- ni’s Guillaume Tell (1829)—national destiny became a recurrent issue on the operatic stage. With the theatricality and sentimentality of the melodrama, and the economic and social support of the ‘official’ theatre industry, grand operas became mega-productions, a thriving business for their producers and a favourite of the public. In the eighteenth century, the theatre had fulfilled the function of nineteenth-century opera in its efficient conveyance of political messages and shaping the character of the public sphere. It was a special theatrical genre, the melodrama, which attracted the public and defined dramatic

27 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (Grove Music Online, accessed at: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/25877?q=singspiel &search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit , on 29-05-2009). 40 krisztina lajosi poetry for the next century. Peter Brooks argues that in order to understand the passion of the nineteenth-century for the theatre and for the theatrical in general, we should analyse the ‘melodramatic imagination’ of the age. Melodrama, the French version of the Singspiel, was written for a large public that extended from the petit bourgeois to the Empress Jose- phine.28 While French melodrama was democratic in style, aiming to reach a popular audience, it was also searching for more aesthetic coherence and self-consciousness. Brooks traces the origins of the melodrama back to the pantomime theatre of the late eighteenth century, when only the so-called patented theatres, like Thèatre-Français, the Opéra, and the Italiens were given monopoly by state officials to perform both the classical repertory and full-scale new productions. The secondary theatres had to be content with ballets, pantomimes and puppet shows. Since speech—that is performing the pieces of the classical repertory—was forbidden, the secondary theatres used music and gesture as their major means of expression. These musical pantomimes became more and more elaborate and incorporated pieces of dialogue, coming close to the genre of the nineteenth- century mélodrame. The French Revolution abolished the monopoly of the patent theatres and liberated the secondary theatres, which had already been equipped with a well-developed theatrical style of combining music, movement and stage design in order to convey the message of the play that attracted a mostly uneducated audience. Napoleon re-established the patent for a period with a strict censorship of the theatres, radically reduc- ing them in number. In his opinion, classical French tragedy was the most suitable expression of imperial glory. Yet theatre in general, and melodrama in particular, continued to flourish in Paris. The Restoration in 1814 brought freedom again to all the theatres, possibly due to the conscious policy of an insecure monarch to provide bread and circuses: People absorbed their theatre-going in massive doses: an evening’s entertainment would consist of various curtain raisers and afterpieces, as well as one and sometimes two full-length plays, and would last five hours or more. (. . .) Stage theatricality was excessive, and life seemed to aspire to its status.29 During and after the Restoration, the prestige of classical French tragedy and the popularity of melodrama joined forces in another genre that came

28 Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1976), p. xii. 29 Ibid., p. 86. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 41 to dominate the Parisian stages and later all of Europe: the grand opera. This monumental operatic genre enjoyed the financial support of the traditional public of the Opéra so that it could afford lavish spectacles with more developed and complex stage machinery than the Baroque theatre. However, the previous popularity and aesthetic norm of the melodrama undeniably influenced grand opera’s theatricality and its broadening range of topics. The great musical stage tableaux and the excessive sentimentality of the performances were all residues of the melodrama, which became a guiding poetic principle of grand operas. The Italian opera buffa, the German Singspiel, and the French grand opéra, represent in fact three different national styles, as well as three different approaches to the concept of the nation and its operatic representation. A mixture of all these genres can be found in the so-called national operas that became popular in Central and Eastern Europe. The opera buffa was the first to bring onto the operatic stage common people and to represent their social problems. The Singspiel brought to the foreground the folksiness and conviviality of common social singing. The grand opera raised the awareness of history in general and national history in particular. In the multinational Habsburg Empire, nineteenth-century nation- building was not only a question of a political and social transformation as in France, but actually threatened the very existence of the whole state, because many ethnic groups wanted to establish their own separate states. Topics from folklore and history became a potential menace for the Viennese authorities, since they reminded the public of a separate cultural consciousness that was seen as different and sovereign over the imperial identity. In spite of harsh censorship, the intelligentsia and some enlightened aristocrats were ardent supporters of national theatres and national cultural practices in general. Since a large portion of the Empire’s population lived in rural conditions, the Singspiel with its folksiness could easily reach a wide public. On the other hand, the increasing interest in history and historical drama in the spoken theatre paved the way for the grand opera. This operatic form also contained passages of folk music and dances. National operas, a hybrid genre, were ideologically the descendants of historical dramas that had already canonised and popularised certain topics and historical figures, and musically a mixture of Singspiel and grand opera. It is impossible to approach the phenomenon of national opera solely from a musicological point of view. These operas were also discursive for- mations, artistic products of the cultural and social practices of the age. 42 krisztina lajosi

They shaped the historical consciousness of the public more effectively than scholarly historiographies. Most of the works regarded as national operas were actually crossbreeds of accumulated national mythology and nineteenth-century political ideology. As John Neubauer points out, national operas in fact relied on foreign ideas and aesthetic currents; they borrowed from other national cultures.30 European nineteenth-century national canons were hybrid. Nonetheless, they were able to shape the national consciousness of the public, since the appropriated foreign elements mingled with the already familiar recurrent topics of historical, literary and musical memory. Plots drawing on history and perceived as reflections of contemporary local or rural settings, the language of the libretto written in vernacular, and the reminiscences of the folk tunes or well-known local melodies incorporated in music, as well as the historical evolution of the theatre and opera house into a site of public sphere all contributed to the perception of certain works as national operas. But operas also reached out beyond the walls of the theatres through piano transcripts that made them available for private entertainment outside the location of the opera houses, and by popularising arias and choirs in choral societies.

The Importance of the Chorus The singing chorus was maybe the most important factor in transforming operas into a virtual public sphere. “The chorus was a group of actors who could represent ‘the people’ as a mass—exactly what the drama of liberalism required—their voices organized, as only music could organize them, into sustained, unified, and commanding utterance that expressed their identity, independence, unity, and importance.”31 The chorus was opera’s great advantage over the spoken theatre, which could only represent dramatic conflicts as the struggles of individuals, while the opera could bring crowds on the stage, where they could let their (unanimous) voice be heard as an organised mass of people. It was this concordia dis- cors embodied in the chorus that actually elevated the opera into one of the most popular artistic genres of the nineteenth century. The ‘voice of the people’ gradually came to dominate both the political scene and the operatic stages.

30 John Neubauer, “Zrinyi, Zriny, Zrinski”, Neohelicon, Volume 29, Number 1 (2002). 31 James Parakilas, “Political Representation and the Chorus in Nineteenth-Century Opera”, 19th-Century Music, vol. 16, No. 2, (1992): 181–202, 184. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 43

In the eighteenth century the chorus was not a regular part of the opera houses. The only exception was the Paris Opéra (Académie Royale de Musique), but at the other opera houses in Paris—the Opéra-comique and Comédie-italienne—there were strict rules about the use of the chorus. The authorities controlled crowd scenes of a political nature even on the stage. They censored the ‘voice of the people’. But beginning with the French Revolution and thereafter spreading all over Europe, as a result of the scenes of political struggle now presented on the operatic stage, the demand for choruses witnessed an unprecedented growth. While in the eighteenth century social tensions were presented as conflicts between individuals (the conflict between Figaro and Count Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro), in the nineteenth century it was imagined as public conflict between a ruler and his subjects (Queen Gertrude and the Hungarian nation in Erkel’s opera Bánk bán) or as tension between two nations (Austrians and Hungarians in Erkel’s László Hunyadi). Beethoven’s only opera, which today is mostly performed under the name Fidelio, exemplifies this ideological and structural change in the history of opera. Its original title was Leonore and Beethoven rewrote it several times, thus leaving to posterity four overtures and three versions of the same work. But are they variations of the same work or three different operatic conceptions of the same story? Fidelio(/Leonore) is a typical rescue opera, which became a very popular genre after the French Revo- lution. It was first performed in Theater an der Wien in 1805 in Vienna. Ironically the rescue opera came just at the right moment because at the time the Habsburg capital was under French military occupation. Since the bourgeois and aristocrat theatregoers had fled the city, at the opening night of Beethoven’s opera the audience was mainly composed of French officers. Although, even in these circumstances, the opera was not a failure, nevertheless Beethoven’s friends persuaded the composer to revise it. By 1814 when the opera was presented in Kärthnerthor theatre in Vienna, Beethoven had written two new overtures and he also made substantial changes in the length and story of the opera. One of the most significant alterations concerned the finale of Fidelio. In Leonore, when Florestan is released from the prison at the end of the opera, he sings a love duet with his disguised wife, Leonora, about fidelity, love and freedom. In Fidelio in the final liberation scene all the political prisoners are freed and a chorus dominates the stage. The accent shifts from the private drama to the public issue of political injustice and liberty. Freedom had already been an important aspect of Leonore, but because of the circumstances of its performance—French officers in the audience—it 44 krisztina lajosi could not achieve a direct effect. But in 1814, after the Napoleonic wars and moving towards the end of the Congress of Vienna, the final liberation scene of Fidelio could provoke strong emotions in the Austrian public and made the opera immediately successful. The chorus scene at the end of the opera was an important rhetorical vehicle contributing to the tri- umphant reception of Fidelio. After Fidelio ‘the voice of the people’ could be heard more often on the European operatic stages. One might look at the table of contents of a CD containing ‘famous opera choruses’ to see that almost all the titles are from nineteenth-century operas. Even though eighteenth-century operas also contained memorable ensemble sections (like the famous “Viva la liberta!” from Don Giovanni) these could not have such a public impact as nineteenth-century choruses. While an ensemble is usually just the closing section of an act or scene in a pre-nineteenth-century opera, the chorus can be seen as the dramatic and musical culmination of a nineteenth- century opera. The chorus attained the same function and importance as the arias. For example Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1872) actually consists almost entirely of vast chorus scenes. The increased use of choruses triggered other alterations as well. The fact that instead of an ensemble of singing characters, masses of people populated the stage in a chorus also required adjustment of the scenery and structure. The ranges of small- scale, rapid episodes were exchanged for huge tableau-like settings, which dominated the operatic stages of the nineteenth century.

Types and Functions of Choruses The history of nineteenth-century opera begins with the growth of the chorus. Carl Dahlhaus in Nineteenth-Century Music differentiates between two types of choruses: the so-called scene-setting or picturesque chorus and the action chorus.32 The picturesque chorus, according to Dahlhaus, functions as musical extension of the stage décor in opera comique, where it provides local colour; whereas the action chorus was crucial to drama- turgy in serious grand operas. These action choruses—as Philip Gossett also argues—“developed a musical personality, acquired a dramatic force, became, in short, a people”.33

32 Dahlhaus, pp. 124–134. 33 Philip Gossett, “Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in Risorgimento Opera”, Cambridge Opera Journal 2 (1990): 44. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 45

To identify political representation entirely with action choruses would miss the significance of the picturesque chorus, which was actually much more pervasive in the operatic literature of the nineteenth century. Village festivals, folk rituals, weddings and monumental dance scenes appeared on the stage, whose dramatic function involved more than serving as markers of geographic settings. The folk scenes and picturesque choruses representing conviviality and folk character were important dramatic tools for example in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (1866), in Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821), in Borodin’s Prince Igor (1890) or Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar (1836). In a time when culture was a matter of politics and politics a recurrent element of culture, the slightest allusion to local colour immediately had a political function. The third type of chorus that became prevalent in the nineteenth century was what we might call the divided chorus. In order to represent the dramatic conflict between two people or two nations more than one chorus was needed. This sometimes involved more than one soloist-protagonist, too. For example the antagonistic nations in Aida—the Egyptians and the Ethiopians—or in Nabucco—the Jews and the Babylonians—are represented by at least two solo protagonists belonging to opposite camps. Wagner in The Flying Dutchman (1843) also makes use of such a divided chorus technique. On the one hand it expresses the different character of the Dutch and of the Norwegian sailors, and on the other hand, the purely female and a purely male choruses emphasise the conflict based on gender issues (between Senta, Daland, Erik, and the Dutchman). The chorus became such an important structural element of operas in the nineteenth century that even when a solo part was performed, the soloist was the representative of a group, most of the time he or she spoke in the name of the people. The rulers were not above the ordinary people any longer, either morally or politically. Instead of the eighteenth century absolutist king, the ‘citizen king’ appears on the stage who uses his power to serve, not to dominate his people. The conversion from an absolutist perspective on power to a democratic one is represented in Verdi’s Nab- ucco by the figure of King Nebuchadnezzar who turns from a tyrant into a servant of God and his people. Public and private issues intermingle and create dramatic conflict whenever the protagonist soloist was also the representative of a people. In Bellini’s Norma, for example, the Gaulish high priestess’s amorous liaison with the Roman Consul Pollione causes discontent among her people. In Aida, the lovers—the Ethiopian princess Aida and the Egyptian captain Radames—have to face the criticism and ostracism of their people. Both 46 krisztina lajosi in Norma and in Aida the couples can find peace and happiness only in death. Love might guide the lives of the individuals, but the masses are dominated by the passion of patriotic love and national pride ready to oppress the individual will. Contrary to Kieślowski’s Blue, where the task of the French musician was to compose a musical representation of a unified European spirit, in the nineteenth century, artists were supposed to create works that represented the essence of a nation. However, a paradoxical situation arises: in spite of stressing the particularity of the nation, the cultural practices for its realisation were present everywhere in Europe and followed almost the same techniques. The establishment of national cultural canons can be seen as the result of an international co-operation among a cosmopolitan elite.34 Was the task of writing national music actually easier than that of creating a musical representation of unified Europe? If one only considers the overwhelming number of theoretical and critical writings scrutinis- ing the nature of the ‘national’, the answer is definitely no. The nation was just as heterogeneous and just as much a matter of ideology as every other socio-political entity in human history. Singing already fulfilled a very significant role in the turmoil of the French Revolution,35 as well as later in the European revolutions of 1848 in Central and Eastern Europe. Benedict Anderson argues that modern nation states were characterised by unisonality, a term he uses to describe the way in which certain songs (national anthems for example) embody the nation when sung together by the people.36 The choruses were bedrocks of national unisonality. According to Philip Bohlman “nationalism draws attention to the nation-state and supports its function while in the same process drawing attention from the music itself.”37 Choruses provided the “background music” of a period defined by Rousseau’s ideas about the connectedness of language and music and Herder’s theories devoted to the Volkslieder (1778–79) where he argued that the “real voice of the people” was audible in their songs. Nationalism cannot be separated from music as something extra-musical, essentially different from an ideal musical essence, because

34 Joep Leerssen, “Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture”, Nations and Nationalism 12 (4), (2006): 559–578. 35 Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution. Popular Culture and Politics, 1787–1799 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996). 36 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (New York & London: Verso, 1983), p. 145. 37 Bohlman, p. 20. shaping the voice of the people in 19th-c. operas 47 it was not just an external ideology imposed on ‘pure’ music by state officials. Cultural nationalism was the context of these musical pieces—a characteristic of their semiotic network—shaped by the dynamic relation between creation and reception.

The Voice of the People One of the lessons taught by the French revolution was that the crowd, ‘the people’ in other words, can influence political and social issues. The people can have their say over political issues through a bottom-up movement, whereas earlier political decisions were made by a top-down act of a king, a military leader or a high official. The village market becomes just as important a place for the representation of political ideas as the palace or the church, both in a figurative sense, meaning that the village market became a scene on the operatic stage (Smetana’s The Bartered Bride) and in a real sense, during the choral festivals which were often organised in such public spaces. Institutions which before the nineteenth century had been more or less isolated begin to open up for the public. As the bourgeois intelligentsia gained interest in the culture of the ‘folk’, the ‘folk’ was also influenced by aristocratic and middle class culture. There had always been some kind of cultural exchange between the different social classes. Nevertheless, the frequency, the mode and the impact of transfer was unprecedented in the nineteenth century. The most important sites of transfer were cultural institutions. Institutionalised singing— whether it is the opera or the Liedertafeln—had a leading role in creating and maintaining sites of transfer between two cultural strata or between culture and politics. Songs could spread ideas more effectively than pam- phlets or political orations and they could give a common voice to the people. However, we should not forget that the cult of the bandleader, the maestro, also began in the nineteenth century. Napoleon and the French revolutionary crowd were the products of the same age; the rise of the chorus and that of the individual virtuoso genius performer were parallel phenomena too. Their ideal co-existence was temporary, and towards the end of the century the individual genius would seek seclusion from the Volk, while the Volk began to act as an alienated individual.

Folk Culture and Nation-Building in the Less than Developed World: A Study on the Visual Culture of Citizenship

Ilia Roubanis

On the one hand, folk art is a term that is often employed as the opposite of ‘fine art,’ denoting the production of a wide range of cultural objects by artists with little or no academic training who use techniques and styles of artistic expression particular to a social group or ‘a people’. It is precisely because of this perceived informality of folk artefacts that such techno- cultural objects are of great value for archaeologists and ethnographers who treat them as ‘a window’ to the belief systems and social identities of ‘the people’ under observation. On the other hand, the term folk art also relates to a specific ‘fine art’ movement with academic credentials that from the eighteenth century onwards found expression in literature, music, and, not least, the visual arts. It is precisely because of its formality as a school of artistic expression that the credentials of folk art have been questioned as an ‘authentic’ voice of the people. This paper takes note of both levels of significance in the term ‘folk art,’ in a study of banknote iconography. Specifically, the objective is to trace the evolution and transformation of folk visual culture as expressed on paper currencies of the capitalist periphery from the last quarter of the nineteenth century until the eve of the Second World War. The research question proposed is how this specific iconography relates to the theme of national identity of the societies under examination. In line with archaeological or ethnographic approaches to the study of social identities, it is suggested that banknote iconography may be treated as ‘a window’ to nationalist cultures and belief systems. Historically, the design, circulation and enforced dissemination in the market of paper currencies as ‘national tenders’ is a phenomenon associated with the history of the nation-state and ‘total war’. Nation-wide paper currencies were enforced in the market as ‘national tenders’ in historical circumstances such as the French Revolution, the American Civil War and the First World War. In such dire circumstances, paper currencies were first and foremost a way of mobilising human and material resources not with silver or gold that 50 ilia roubanis was scarce in state coffers, but with cheaper ‘promises to pay the bearer’ that could—but often would not—be honoured in the distant future.1 As a mobilizing resource, the issue of paper currencies presupposed technological capabilities that were available only towards the end of the eighteenth century. Indeed, it was only in the beginning of the nineteenth century that the security printing industry could meet the demands of an ever maturing capital market requiring non-falsifiable bonds, cheques and various forms of promissory currencies, including banknotes. Thus, in the core of the industrially advanced capitalist world, companies such as Bradbury and Wilkinson (London), the American Banknote Com- pany (New York), Imprimerie Filigranique (Paris) or Staatsnoven Atelier (Vienna) catered not merely for a specific financial metropolis, but also, for the industrially underdeveloped world. This technological dependency between the developed and underdeveloped states endured until the aftermath of the Second World War. We thus have a paradoxical phenomenon of cheap money ‘for the people’ being the product of an extremely globalised industry. The aesthetic dimension of this story and, more specifically, the interplay between global aesthetics and national identity has been scarcely explored.2 Focusing on the emergence and evolution of folk banknote iconography in the less than developed world, this paper aspires to contribute to the understanding of nationalism as an aesthetic experience. In fact, Margalit has suggested that nationalism could be treated as a particular ‘school of expression’.3 However, the methodological consequence of such an observation, which calls for the consideration of nationalism as a civilisation with a characteristic range of techno-cultural objects, has not as yet been fully explored. Pursuing this archaeological approach to the study of nationalism, this paper unfolds in three parts. Firstly, there is an attempt to situate the theme of banknote iconography within the context of larger debates in nationalism studies in an attempt to justify a series of methodological choices that have been made in this study. Secondly, the main argument is presented; it is suggested that as a school of ‘fine art’, folk iconography essentially appropriated the aesthetics of a pre-existing

1 D. Glasner, An Evolutionary Theory of State Monopoly Over Money, in D. Kevin and R.H. Timberlake, eds, Money and the Nation State (Oakland: The Independent Institute, 1998) pp. 21–46. 2 E. Helleiner, “National Currencies and National Identities”, in American Behavioral Scientist Vol. 41, No. 10, (August 1998): 1412. 3 A. Margalit, “The Moral Psychology of Nationalism”, in R. McKim and J. McMahan eds, The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). a study on the visual culture of citizenship 51 movement, namely naturalism, using symbols of authenticity—such as costumes and landscapes—to construct a nationally specific appeal to universality. And last but not least, it is argued that folk visual culture on banknote iconography was of a ‘militant’ nature, as designers aimed to create a nation-wide ‘customising experience’ that aesthetically harnessed amongst ‘the people’ a perception of organic unity.

An Archaeological Approach to the Study of Nation-Branding As a sub-theme of modern history and comparative politics, nationalism is usually studied as a ‘belief system’. In this scheme, the most critical approach to nationalist ontology, treating nations as biological entities, is modernism. The modernist school of nationalism focuses on the question of why ‘the people’ residing in modern nation-states developed a culture of patriotism, which was a specific feeling of intimacy extended both towards fellow citizens and towards a homeland. The common denominator between these neo-Marxist approaches is an underlying epistemologi- cal commitment to Lenin’s affirmation that patriotism was instrumentally projected upon the masses by a bourgeoisie seeking to capture the ‘home market’.4 Proceeding from this hypothesis, nationalism is treated as a variation on the theme of alienation and, thereby, as merely an ideological superstructure or an epiphenomenon masking ‘real’ productive relations. With varying degrees of instrumentality modernist scholars have thus ‘revealed’ nationalist cultures as ‘invented traditions’.5 The lowest common denominator between these modernist narratives is the recognition of a revolutionary rupture in modern ideological history, which initiated an ideological domino effect for the ideological domination of nationalism, namely the French Revolution. For instance, Wallerstein observes that the “greatest symbolic gesture of the French Revolution was the insistence that titles no longer be used”, creating the all inclusive title of ‘the citizen’. From that point onwards, he argued, the concept of citizenship has become a source of binary oppositions that have defined modern political stratification: thus adult and minor, majority and minority, educated and ignorant, civilised and barbarian, rich and poor, are some of the ways individuals experience their position in a

4 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 20, (Moscow: International Publishers, 1964), p. 397. 5 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism 2nd edn., (London: Verso, 1991) and E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 52 ilia roubanis national society as citizens with rights and obligations.6 Thus framed, the issue at hand seems to be the institutionalisation of a social hierarchy of citizens founded on a variety of factors such as gender, property, place of birth, age, skin-colour, religious creed and the like. However, what this structural approach seems to undermine is the integrity of citizenship as an experience. In sum, while the modernist position is quite potent when it comes to the deconstruction of the notion of citizenship as a title of basic equality, it is less effective in accounting for the emergence of patriotism as a feeling of intimacy and comradeship amongst alien to each other individuals. Anderson is one of the few followers of the modernist school who did not shy away from the question of emotional intimacy, addressing the question in his ‘imagined communities’ thesis.7 There, he argued that emotional intimacy shared amongst complete strangers—who treat each other as brothers and sisters—is the unintended consequence of print capitalism. In fact, Gellner made this point much earlier, albeit less explicitly, when he suggested that “(. . .) the minimum requirement for full citizenship is literacy.”8 The modernist argument is quite straightforward: the homogenisation of reading publics for marketing purposes, the coming together of peasants in urban centres and the bureaucratisation of governance created mass audiences of a common linguistic canon. Thus intimacy amongst estranged citizens was the unintended consequence of print capitalism and bureaucratisation that customised language as an effective ‘infrastructure of imagination’. And yet such an affirmation resists empirical evidence, since a number of devout patriots across the globe have been illiterate, village dwellers and residents of states with very small bureaucracies. Moreover, there have been several ‘imagined communities’ constructed between people who in fact did not share a common linguistic idiom. However, the most potent dimension of Anderson’s argument is the question he poses, namely how complete strangers acquire patriotic emotional intimacy. In consonance with Anderson’s thesis, it may be suggested that print capitalism may in fact be one among many ‘infrastructures of imagination’. After all, what Anderson required from imagined communities is not linguistic compat- ibility as such but, primarily, an individual emotional commitment by the

6 I. Wallestein, “Citizens All? Citizens Some!, The Making of the Citizen”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2003): 650–679. 7 Anderson, Imagined Communities. 8 E. Gellner, Thought and Change, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 159. a study on the visual culture of citizenship 53 members of a national group toward each other and, collectively, towards a homeland. Historically, this experience of patriotic intimacy may have been harnessed via a number of media, technological modalities or, in other words, nation-wide infrastructures of imagination. The question is not how a national culture emerged for the benefit of national elites but— less instrumentally—how the transformation of governance and modes of production ‘nationalised’ the individual’s everyday life. In line with the modernist thesis it may indeed be suggested that the state or market forces dominated the public sphere as culturally homogenising forces through print-capitalism, nation-wide school curricula, communication networks, weights and measures, monuments, national holidays and, not least, national currencies. One may thus study the empowering aspect of this homogenising dynamic, the fact that a ‘dominant national culture’ empowered thousands of individuals to operate as workers, soldiers, tax-payers, across the realms of a sovereign territory with as much convenience as they would have in their home town. In this respect, the banknote is an appropriate object of study because it is a techno-cultural object that has been employed as a medium in one of the most foundational rituals of modern societies, namely impersonal economic interaction. Moreover, unlike commodity currencies such as silver and gold coins, paper currencies were associated with the national economies since their value is exclusively associated with a promise—’the promise to pay the bearer’—that is only as credible as the government that guarantees its enforcement. In fact, with the exception of major currencies such as the pound and the dollar—paper currencies are promises that are valid across yet only within the nation state. This paper focuses on banknote iconography of tenders circulating in nation-states that were self-conscious of their own liminality as backward, impoverished or underdeveloped. These were nation-states where paper currencies were of far greater significance because they were in a state of a perpetual financial crisis. This archaeological approach builds on the modernist thesis, driving however the argument away from the theme of literacy and normative alignment of citizens towards an aesthetic ‘nationalisation’. Modernist approaches to nationalism usually treat the emergence of national identity as a the direct result of experiences acquired in structured institutional environment such as the army, school, or civil service, which is in line with the ultimately Marxist objective of revealing the mechanics of ideological hegemony. Such an approach neglects more informal processes of initiation into a national group, such as the family, the market place and the like. 54 ilia roubanis

In fact, it can be argued that initiation into a national community involves, first and foremost, aesthetic rather than instrumental and goal- oriented ‘learning experiences’. Gotshalk clarifies the distinction: Scientific observation, like so-called ‘practical’ activity, employs perception as a means to a further end, in its case the verification of a description or an explanation of features of observed situations. Knowledge is the end— grounded and tested information—and perception is incidental to this. . . . Now aesthetic experience reverses this pattern of scientific observation as fully as it does that so-called ‘practical activity’. Knowledge, like action, is a means, and aesthetic experience employs knowledge, sometimes large stores of it, to light up points within the perceptual field and to help to establish a full and amplified perception of all that is perceptible there. But perception is the end.9 Becoming member of a national community seems to primarily involve learning through participation in national life until one acquires ‘a taste’ for what emotionally and cognitively ‘feels like home’. For decades, several authors such as Deutsch and Billig pointed towards this experiential dimension of national identity which, unlike neo-Marxist approaches, builds upon notions of inter-subjectivity.10 Following their line of argu- mentation the issue is to study mass experience in the wider context of impersonal social interaction that characterises modern societies. Bank note iconography is an appropriate point of departure because, while the exchange of money has been for millennia a medium of economic transaction, the use of money as a catholic mediator of value is a distinctly modern phenomenon of commoditised economies. Indeed, up until the first half of the nineteenth century it was not uncommon for several imperial structures to receive tribute in kind, while monetary exchange was confined to the realms of the army, long-distance trade, and the like. But in modern times monetary capital is an indispensable factor of production, with economic interaction being increasingly impersonal, contrac- tual, and normatively regulated. Moreover, banknotes are a particularly interesting socio-cultural object mainly because they are not money, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. For millennia monetary objects were most commonly encountered in the form of so-called commodity currencies. These artefacts were deemed

9 D.W. Gotshalk, Art and the Social Order, (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), p. 7. 10 M. Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995), K.W. Deutsch Nation- alism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationalism, (London: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1953). a study on the visual culture of citizenship 55 valuable because of their precious metallic content, minted in a standard weight and measure. In this sense a banknote was merely a token, or ‘a promise to pay the bearer’ (in metallic currency) whose exchange value rested on trust. In the seventeenth century, promissory notes in the Neth- erlands, England and France were issued by scriveners and goldsmiths offering small-scale banking services.11 The quality of their signature, that is, the claim to public trust of each individual issuer rested with his good name as individual businessmen in the marketplace. However, the increased use of credit as a monetary device coincides with historical periods of increased social mobility, making a ‘good name’ an obsolete claim to public confidence. Banknotes thus evolved to become ‘model-contracts’ between the issuing institution (bank), the ultimate guardian of normative order (the state) and the banknote bearer (the citizen). This ready-made contract allowed the economic interaction of everyone-to-anyone within a normatively defined community, that is, the sovereign territory of the contract-guarantor state. Therefore, in its current form, the banknote is a socio-cultural object characteristic of the nation-state civilisation. In addition, the ‘promise to pay the bearer’ on a piece of paper intro- duces a twofold technological constraint: first, the medium limits the code of communication to a printable code, such as text and image; secondly, the medium requires the use of cutting edge technology. In other words, because of its representational character, the note is an inherently insecure channel of communication as it may be falsified. Trust is then associated with security features, such as vignettes, making forgery harder and security designs an integral part of the value exchanged. Vignettes are thus images that seek to inspire state-to-citizen, bank-to-citizen, and thereby citizen-to-citizen trust. Banknotes require from their bearers both cognitive and aesthetic engagement. The banknote was for more than a century a catalyst to a ritual of economic interaction, where in order to participate one is required to be ‘nationally compatible’ in both normative and aesthetic terms. In times of urgency—the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Great War—the state nationalised this infrastructure of economic interaction by claiming for itself the exclusive issuing right; this pattern of nationalisation was similar to other nationalising experiences of infrastructures

11 V. Hewitt, “A Distant View: Imagery and Imagination in the Paper Currency of the British Empire 1800–1900,” in E. Gilbert and E. Helleiner, ed., Nation-States and Money: The Past, Present and Future of National Currencies (London: Routledge 1999). 56 ilia roubanis that could affect the mobilisation of human and material resources across a sovereign territory like train networks, telegraph/telephone services, or bank reserves. Incidentally, it was also in the context of total war when the design of banknote vignettes was nationalised. Thus the nation-state took hold of banknotes in the context of normative, aesthetic and material regimentation against ‘the enemy’, maintaining this prerogative in times of peace. In this sense, economic rituals were nationalised both in aesthetic and in material terms, harnessing rather than merely reflecting patriotism.

The Folk Appropriation of Imperialist Naturalism The banknote has a subtle ‘nation-branding’ effect. It should be remembered that it takes only a fraction of a second for a citizen to recognise a note as a ‘national tender’ and this must be the case for a transaction to take place. People learn in aesthetic terms and this is a reality that the advertising industry counts upon; it is indeed paradoxical that the visual culture of nationalism is significantly understudied in a day and age where nation-branding is associated with the multi-million-dollar industry of tourism. Moreover, the awareness of aesthetic learning is older than television. Helleiner cites a U.S. Federal Treasury clerk who, as the beginning of the American Civil War in 1863, seemed to be quite conscious of the potency of banknote iconography as an aesthetic experience, where perception, rather than goal oriented knowledge, is the desired end: [They] would tend to teach the masses the prominent periods in our country’s history. The laboring man who would receive every Saturday night, a copy of the ‘Surrender of Burgoyne’ for his weekly wages, would soon enquire who General Burgoyne was and to whom he surrendered. This curiosity would be aroused and would learn the facts from a fellow laborer or from his employer. The same would be true of other National pictures, and in time many would be taught leading incidents in our country’s history, so that they would soon be familiar to those who would never read them in books, teaching them history and imbuing them with a national feeling.12 Up until the American Civil War there was no such a thing as a national tender in the USA, since each bank issued its own tenders in an environment of ‘free banking’. With the gradual nationalisation of banknote production, certain security printing companies looked abroad to extend their clientele.

12 E. Helleiner, “National Currencies and National Identities,” American Behavioral Sci- entist 41,10 (August 1998): 1412. a study on the visual culture of citizenship 57

To this day, one of the surviving leaders in the industry of security printing—the American Banknote Company (ABNC), founded in 1823—takes pride in the legacy of its founding fathers, that is, Cyrus and Asher Durant. And while Cyrus is credited with a tradition of technological innovation which, the company claims, has been maintained, Asher has a different claim to fame: (He) was the first to popularize Greek gods and goddesses in the vignettes (small pictures) in documents of value. These devices are of import in that they are hard to copy, their significance is recognized, they are aesthetic and they are timeless.13 Implicitly, ABNC’s website valorises as ‘timeless’ the aesthetic status quo from the eighteenth, through the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. It is of paramount significance to note that technology is a power resource, which structures not merely the global economy, but also global aesthetics. In the main capitals of London, Paris, and New York, industrial supremacy was matched by military supremacy and, not accidentally, with a claim to a superior culture and civilisation. As the fine art of the ‘developed people’, neoclassicism was thought of as encapsulat- ing aesthetically a civilisation of Enlightenment. In the words of Leoussi: Naturalism was the Keatsian claim that beauty and truth—as discovered by science—were co-extensive. This meant that nature, the object of positivist knowledge, was also the object of aesthetic pleasure, and that the true existence of a form in nature was the measure of that beauty of that form.14 In this naturalist spirit, security printing establishments that imagined themselves as situated in a ‘new Athens’ or a ‘new Rome’ claimed an aesthetic authority, which complemented their technological supremacy. By implication, what was considered aesthetically superior in New York, London, Paris, or Vienna gained immediate currency as ‘timeless’. For instance, depicted in the table below are a few samples of vignette designs distributed amongst ABNC’s global clientele, without regard to the indigenous cultural settings in which these notes were to circulate. It should be noted that other leading companies in the global industry of security printing such as Thomas de la Rue and Bradbury & Wilkinson, employed precisely the same aesthetic contours. The effect of globalizing aesthetics

13 www.abncompany.com. 14 A. S. Leoussi, Nationalism and Classicism (Basingstoke: McMillan Press Ltd, 1998), pp. 27–29. 58 ilia roubanis

2 Reis, Brazil, 1918 One Dollar, Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, 1935

25 Dr., National Bank of Greece, 1901 5 Dr., National Bank of Greece, 1889

50.000 Reis United States of Brazil, National 1000 Dr. Treasury, 1912 National Bank of Greece, 1902

Figure 1. The global dissemination of classicism, notes made by ABNC. as a direct consequence of technological dependency is depicted on the table above, which includes samples produced for ABNC’s clients across the less than developed world. Ultimately, there was also political significance to this claim of global aesthetic authority. In his famous essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber suggested that there was such a thing as a Western civilisation founded on Christianity and Hellenism. His essay did not merely address the rise of capitalism, but implicitly, the dominance of specific a study on the visual culture of citizenship 59 nations over the world by virtue of their rational culture and their ownership of truth.15 Thus the cultural imprint of technological superiority—in security printing amongst other sectors—was quite significant in that it generated a seemingly objective or global criterion by which nations could be ranked as closer or further from (Western) aesthetic ideals of civility. In this scheme, an important intellectual challenge was to harmon- ise the idea of a common classical pagan past with a European Chris- tian tradition. In line with the classical tradition of nudity is the figure of Marianne, as depicted in the famous painting of Eugène Delacroix (1830).16 This feminine image of the French Republic, which is in consonance with the feminine for liberty (fr:Liberté) and reason (fr:Raison) was at a later stage Christianized by evoking the all-too-familiar cultural archetype of Madonna. A French five francs bill, issued in 1873, depicted the French Republic represented by the allegoric figure of ‘Madonna-Marianne.’ Resembling a Madonna, she is seated on a throne, adorned with a halo, with two youths seated at her feet under her protection. France seems to be for her children what the Madonna is for Catholics, that is, a mother figure, the patrie. However, this Marianne is also made to hold Mercury’s Caduceus. Her ‘children’ are seated at her feet dressed in ancient togas; the plasticity of their bodies resembles that of Hellenic art. Before the seated youth one sees tools, and an open book. Knowledge and, by implication, rationality seems to be the key to prosperity. A similar image of the mother-patrie was then exported via a French security printing establishment to Greece.17 In this case, the Marianne figure is replaced by Athena/Minerva.18 Again the mother figure is a guarantor of prosperity and glory. She is the one to invest her child with a laurel corolla. Under her protection the ‘children’ enjoy peace (dove), glory (laurel corolla) and prosperity (fruit and hammer). In sum, the state appears to be more than a contract-guarantor, becoming more significant as an objectively beautiful, civil, nourishing, and glorious mother. Such state allegories were essentially aesthetic mercenaries, guaranteeing both security (of the note) and national prestige for the Greek state.

15 M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Unwin Univer- sity Books, 1974), pp. 13–15. 16 Agulhon, Maurice. Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1789–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 17 Ilia Roubanis, PhD (2007), Thesis title: ‘Nation-Building as Perception-Building: The Case Study of the Banknote in Greece and Turkey,’ Department of Social and Political Sci- ences, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. 18 ‘The Banknotes of Greece: from 1828 until the Present Day,’ Pisteos Bank, Athens 1979. 60 ilia roubanis

Figure 2. Five franc note, issued by the Bank of France, 1873.

Figure 3. 25 LMU drachmas note, issued by Bank of Epirothessally, 1887.

Another example of the pagan-Christian aesthetic bridge is the frequent depiction of the child-like figure of Hermes—clearly identified by the Cadu- ceus staff—resembling the depiction of angels or cupids in Renaissance art: an asexual being with a childlike innocence. Thus pagan, overtly ‘liberal’ sexuality would be censored, so as to fit the moral rigidity of Christian aesthetics. As consumers of iconography, the technologically backward peoples of the world were made to believe that beings with censored sexuality, a study on the visual culture of citizenship 61

1 Reis, United States of Brazil, National, Treasury, 1891 25 Dr., National Bank of Greece, 1905

Figure 4. Cupid the bearer of wealth (Greece and Brazil).

2 Pesos, Bank of London and 25 Dr., National Bank of Greece Mexico, 1914 set in circulation: 01.01.1905

Figure 5. Commerce and navigation (Greece and Mexico). naturalist plasticity, and explicit references to Greco-Roman mythology constituted the aesthetic articulation of ‘progress’. Embracing the aesthetics of progress was then a symbolic step upwards in the ladder of civilised nations. In this scheme, a frequent depiction of progress came in the form of ABNC’s customised images of modern muses—agriculture, navigation, the home-grower, and so on—who literally incarnated both economic development and aesthetic alignment with the West. Such vignettes invited the less-than-developed peoples of this world to respond to expectations of civility and rationality, in terms customised in the core of the capitalist world economy. From Greece to Chile, the world’s technological and aesthetic periphery likened development to a race with laggards and frontrunners and, by implication, a record of achievement to be assessed by an external observer. Aesthetically, the underdeveloped nations were not made subjects of their own destiny, as they did not have their own, home-made, image of progress. Instead, passive female figures were depicted as objects for inspection by an outside observer, turning progress into an award to be granted by a supreme being. Characteristic of this awareness of being 62 ilia roubanis

25 Dr., National Bank of Greece 2 Pesos, Treasury Department of the Date inscribed (34 from 1918–1919) Republic of Chile, 1924 Set in circulation in 1922

Figure 6. History overlooking the world (Greece and Chile). watched is the image depicted on the banknotes above, where history is made to oversee people like an inspecting warrior princess, with a judgement that is as sharp as the sword that she is bearing. However, while the possibility of economic progress or even religious conversion was presumably attainable by the less-than-developed peoples, being white was not. In his introduction to The Mythology of Aryan Nations, published in 1870, G.W. Cox suggested that he had established a scientific basis for the biological integrity of the Aryan race: At least I have no fear that it will fail to carry conviction to all that will weigh the facts without prejudice and partiality . . . of the fact that the mythology of the Vedic and Homeric poets contains the germs, and in most instances more than the germs, of almost all the stories of Teutonic Scandinavian, and Celtic folk-lore. This common stock of materials, which supplements the evidence of language for the ultimate affinity of all the Aryan nations, has been moulded into an infinite variety of shapes by the story tellers of Greeks and Latins, of Persians and Englishmen, of the ancient and the modern Hindu, of Germans and Norwegians, Icelanders, Danes, Frenchmen and Spaniards. On this common foundation of this epic poets of these scattered and long separated children of one primitive family have raised their magnificent fabrics of their cumbrous structures.19 Moving away from the spirit of Enlightenment, this type of racialist discourse created an explicit link between racial attributes and civilisation. Racialist discourse in fact excluded ‘lesser human breeds’ from modernity. The idea of a common European ‘stock’ with a superior claim to civility was not uncritically accepted. For example, Solomon Reinach, a noted

19 G.W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations Vol. I. (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1870), pp. vi–vii. a study on the visual culture of citizenship 63 archaeologist and linguist, observed in 1911 that “the discovery of old Persian and of old Indian literature gave rise to the theory of Aryan languages, which is a fact, and to that of Aryan races, which is an unproved hypothesis.”20 However, while scientific discourse takes place in science journals, public perception is captured when and where scientific authority complements and reinforces established belief systems. While one could rationally object to the notion of Aryan superiority or the white man’s burden, it was less easy to contest the dominant aesthetic belief that ‘ideal beauty’ was to be found in sexually censored, naturalist and white human figures. From China to Mexico and all the way to Greece and Turkey, the aesthetic ideal of human beauty corresponded to something the indigenous people were not, namely Aryan. Introducing racial connotations to naturalist fine art was an aesthetic precursor to the folk movement. In fact, Fallmerayer, a Bavarian scholar, anticipated Cox in his quest for an original ‘Aryan stock’ concentrating his research on the linguistic idiosyncrasies of lamented or unlamented peasants. Following a linguistic and topographical inspection of the Kingdom of Greece, Fallmerayer made the following ‘scientific’ observations: 1) divine Providence has destined Europe to be elevated into the centre- stage of the Christian reconstitution of the world. She is amongst us the source of bliss which, like the four rivers of paradise, concentrates intellectual life in wondrous springs that fertilise all nations. From this Divine seed, in time, it is destined to blossom a human, rational, Christian and just world order . . . 2) the core of a people does not reside in the capital as much as in the countryside, in villages and places where the ancestral strict moral values and the purity of the blood is more easily preserved through the cultivation of land and home-production.21 What scholars expressed in words, banknote vignettes expressed in images. As the peasant became the measure of racial purity, Folk art celebrated the distinct cultural features of ‘a people’ as testament to their unique racial past. For instance, folk artists idealised the national breed by dressing idealised naturalist figures with distinct national costumes rather than tunics. Thus the peasant’s uncontaminated vigour was implicitly juxtaposed to the physical degeneration of the bourgeoisie. The artistic populism of folk

20 S. Reinach, “The Growth of Mythological Study,” in Quarterly Review, No. 429, (Octo- ber 1911): 431. 21 J.P. Fallmerayer, Περί Καταγωγής των Σημερινών Ελλήνων (Athens: Nefeli Editions, 1984), pp. 31, 44. (My emphasis) 64 ilia roubanis

1 Franc, France, 1917 500 Leva, Bulgaria, 1920

5 Reichsmark, Nazi Germany, 1941 1000 Dinara, Kingdom of Serbia, 1941

100 Drachmas, Greece, 1940 10 Lira, Turkey, 1942

Figure 7. The idealised folk european genre. art was specifically designed to celebrate lost purity that could, perhaps, be rejuvenated. The viewers could thus be seduced into reclaiming their national vigour whilst unquestionably accepting the organic integrity of their national family. Examples of this visual discourse across Europe are provided by the table above. However, folk art was not only indebted to naturalism for the plasticity of the human body. The setting and arrangement of ‘simple people’ owed much to the familial discourse of motherlands and fatherlands employed naturalist allegories. The significance of the familial metaphor in the construction of emotionally committing ethnic communities cannot be a study on the visual culture of citizenship 65 overstated. In this context, officially sponsored visual arts provided the organised illusion of a tangible patria allegory, recognisable fathers of the nation, healthy home-grown mothers and sisters, soldiers as brothers in arms, and monuments as prized assets of the national patrimony. In other words, popular visual art was catalytic in the attempt to transplant feelings experienced in the immediate sphere of interpersonal relations—that is the family—to the collective sphere of citizen-to-citizen interaction.

Folk Art as a Customizing Experience The fact that folk culture became the dominant aesthetic contour of depreciated currencies—in the aftermath of war, the preparation for war, or during military struggle—is anything but accidental. These currencies requested and required from citizens not merely to trust the currency, but to trust the state itself. All of these banknotes held a nominated by the state value, with little or no guarantee of paying the bearer in metallic currency. From war to war, economies were thus nationally regimented, in the literal sense of the word. Everyone’s welfare was made dependant on a single currency which, at a single stroke, could be appreciated or deflated, with effectively predictable consequences both in domestic as well as international transactions. In his landmark work The Great Trans- formation (1941), Polanyi noted that nominal value made the economic environment of the citizen seem as common as the weather: It created what amounted to veritable artificial weather conditions varying day by day and affected every member of the community . . . what the businessman, the organized workers, the housewife pondered, what the farmer who planting his crop, the parents who were weighing their children’s chances, the lovers who were waiting to get married, resolved in their minds when considering the favor of the times, was more directly determined by the monetary policy of the central bank than by any other single factor . . . Politically, the nation’s identity was established by the government; economically it was vested in the central bank.22 It was in times of war, or the aftermath of war, when states, failing to acquire security printing technology, nationalised their design and, thereby, their aesthetic effect. Reaching all pockets and, by implication, capturing the gaze of every single citizen, held the promise of an aesthetic impact of national significance. For example, in 1920, when Greece had invaded the Ottoman Empire, the National Bank of Greece decided to

22 Helleiner “National Currencies”, p. 1421. 66 ilia roubanis change its symbolic strategy and instructed the American Banknote Com- pany accordingly: We beg now to advise you that we have prepared by an artist specialized in Greek art a design for 1000 drachma notes, which we are forwarding to you by registered and insured parcel post . . . In making and engraving the model, all the proportions should be kept, and all tints, of the whole and each part separately, be exactly given, without deviation from the general character of the greek {sic} style, which we wish to prevail hereafter in our notes of all denominations.23 Public aesthetics were rigidly nationalised, especially in the context of total war. In this period, the instrumentality of banknote design, the significance of banknote iconography cannot be overstated. What this paper argues is that physical spaces, like a public square, and virtual spaces, like the surface of a banknote, exist in relation to each other, customising the visual culture of each and every citizen in each and every nation-state. Public aesthetics are customised through interrelated networks of art, technology, and political authorities with the power to determine what can and cannot be seen. For example, note the interconnection between Turkish banknote iconography and public monuments in the 1930s. Such sculptures invited the individual male spectator to recognise himself in them. The effects of the hardships and devastation brought about by the War of Independence in Turkey (1919–1922) could hardly be seen upon these muscular, forward-looking, male, citizen-soldiers and workers strategically placed behind or below Atatürk, the Father of all Turks. Amongst the anonymous citizen there was always the eponymous leader who thereby became a constituent part of the officially commissioned national identity. Under the Security Monument, Atatürk’s words addressed the nation: “Be proud, hard-working and believe in yourself.” In sum, Anderson’s term ‘imagined communities’ needs to be qualified. Imagination does not refer to something that is illusory or ‘not real’, but to the ability to conceive that which is absent. What is absent in national groups is personal intimacy amongst the members of a national community. What is present amongst members of a national group is a ‘mythical’ or ‘symbolic’ relationship produced by symbols that have ‘customised’ feelings of familial attachment across a nation. For the individual’s emo-

23 I.A.E.T.E Archives, Numismatic Series, Film 2674, File 48: Order from A.B.N.C 1919–1920, Protocol Number: 56318, From N.B.G Departmental Director to A.B.N.C, August 23rd 1920, 3 pages. a study on the visual culture of citizenship 67

Issue date: 18.11.1940 - Date of withdrawal: 24.04.1946

Monument to a Secure, Confident Future, Guven Park, Ankara, erected in 1935. Constructed by the Austrian artist Anton Hanak (1875–1934) and the German artist Josef Thorak (1889–1952).

Figure 8. The equivalence of physical and virtual space in the 1930s, the case study of Turkey. tional identification with a national group, it is argued, control over public aesthetics is of critical importance. In Goffman’s words: If we see perception as a form of contact and communication, then control over what is perceived is control over contact that is made, and the limitation and regulation of what is shown is a limitation and regulation of contact.24 Control over the mythical and the symbolic should not be seen as instrumental indoctrination or ‘false consciousness’. Social identities across the world and at all times have been constructed upon infrastructures of imagination—numismatic artefacts, architectural constructs, artistic objects—that have a catalytic role in structuring daily social interaction. The banknote is but one of them. Walking across urban spaces of national significance or using national currency does not indoctrinate the citizen. Rather, this aesthetic experience adds emotional significance to the normative foundations of citizenship. Through folk art, the faceless consumer and indistinguishable citizen become intimately related to unknown brothers and sisters, sharing the destiny of the mother-and-father land.

24 E. Goffman, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (London: Cox & Wyman, 1984), p. 74. 68 ilia roubanis

This aesthetic dimension of nation-building relates to the psychological effect that Billig called ‘banal nationalism’, which is largely unconscious: Psychologically, conscious remembering and forgetting are not polar opposites . . . To act and to speak, one must remember. Nevertheless, actors do not typically experience their actions as repetitions, and, ordinarily, speakers are not conscious of the extent to which their own words repeat, and thereby transmit, past grammars and semantics.25 What is hereby argued is that by popularising the familial metaphor, folk culture shaped the ways we are willing to emotionally relate to and feel empathy with unknown to us individuals. Thereby, folk culture has left us with an enduring aesthetic legacy that continues to permeate the way we perceive membership in a national culture as members of a family; it continues to condition the way we devote our energies, channel our anger, and express our solidarity. Indeed, the impact of folk culture in national aesthetics has only begun to be explored.

25 Billig, Banal Nationalism, p. 42 Ideas of Folk and Nation in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century European Architecture

Peter Blundell Jones

A rash of national and regional self-identification passed across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century right at the brink of what we call Modernism, but paradoxically this took place against a background of international cultural exchange that engendered this new kind of self- consciousness. Greatly complicating the issue in the case of architecture (as opposed to other arts) is the change that was slowly but simultaneously developing in the newly defined profession and its modus operandi, as industrial and bureaucratic processes progressively removed ‘mere building’ from its rural craft innocence, and architects took over the whole field of construction.1 The dying so-called ‘vernacular’ could now be histori- cised and added to the style catalogue, but it could also be more deeply studied for its principles and its cultural authenticity. It could therefore also become a fertile ‘other’ from which to criticise the normative academic tradition of classicism. This chapter will examine how architectural historians came to terms with vernacular architecture in Britain, how this was connected with the Gothic Revival and the Arts and Crafts Move- ment, and how its reception tacitly informed the work of some Architec- tural Modernists.

Architecture versus Building: The Discovery of the Vernacular Opening his famous Outline of European Architecture, first published in 1943 and still in print, the great Nikolaus Pevsner defined his subject by claiming that Lincoln Cathedral was architecture while a bicycle shed was mere building, adding that architecture was necessarily made with a view to aesthetic appeal.2 Comparing the ceremonial role of the cathedral with the evident utility of the bicycle shed, generations of readers accepted this

1 In Britain the title ‘Architect’ was not legally protected until 1931, and full-time architectural education only started around 1900. 2 Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1943). 70 peter blundell jones without question, but Pevsner’s argument now seems untenable. Firstly, mere utility is hard to find, for all buildings express the values of the societies that produced them, if only to show that cycles and cycling are deemed unimportant. Secondly, a bicycle shed can surely be well or badly built, and a well-built one can to some eyes contain a kind of aesthetic appeal. Thirdly, the intention of aesthetic appeal is neither necessary nor sufficient for architecture, for it can arise in spite of intention, and the intention can remain unachieved. So unsatisfactory does Pevsner’s propo- sition now appear that we question why he made it in the first place. The underlying reason was surely the need to justify the selective basis of architectural history. Originating in connoisseurship and allied with art history, its business lay with great monuments, with buildings as works of art, not as everyday structures, and these works of art were preferably produced by named artists. Also architecture presumed something of a flourish. Architects were gentlemen and need hardly be concerned with bicycle sheds, since the majority of buildings before 1943 were produced not by them but by relatively unlettered builders, following a tradition that got on by itself quite satisfactorily. Until the Town and Country Plan- ning Acts of 1947, rural constructions in England and Wales could even be built without planning permission and therefore without being drawn in advance, the factor that compels the participation of architects or others with such competence today.3 While the Outline was largely about cathedrals or their equivalent, Pevs- ner must have found the selection process more difficult when embarking on Buildings of England.4 As he explored the country parish by parish, he must have been faced with interesting examples whose authors were mere builders or completely anonymous, and where was he to stop? There is always a house on the edge of the list that might just get in, and the typical can be as important as the unique, especially when it is becoming scarce. Industrial buildings, which Pevsner tended to ignore, have been judiciously added by his successors, and they have tried also to add the social history that has become more familiar and is now more expected. The series grows, but the predominantly stylistic emphasis persists, and

3 The need to pass planning permission and the ever-more labyrinthine building regulations not only compels the presence of experts in meeting these requirements but also transfers crucial judgements about the whole operation to paper in advance of construction. 4 Nikolaus Pevsner, et al. Buildings of England, a series county by county, first published by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, in the 1950s and 60s, now republished in revised form by Yale. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 71 the limited format forbids inclusion of more than a very small part of the total building stock, so it must still be intensely selective. Each house in every village has a history, and many would be worth the telling, but it is hard to imagine such blanket coverage ever being undertaken. In comparison with this history of ‘high’ or ‘polite’ architecture working from the top down, that of the vernacular, of ordinary buildings, has been slow to develop, in spite of the rich variety of examples from across the world. Local studies were long ago made by architects, for example C.J. Innocent’s History of English Building Construction of 1916,5 but these were usually descriptive and technical in nature, concentrating on the fabric and its assembly rather than perceived meaning or the way of life contained. The social side developed in studies of distant cultures undertaken by anthropologists, but often their work lacked detail on the buildings, and without good drawings or photographs it was little noticed by architects until the 1950s.6 A major international breakthrough was achieved with Bernard Rudofsky’s exhibition and book Architecture Without Archi- tects of 1965,7 but its impact was largely visual and still left much vacant ground to fill between the architecture and the anthropology, and we have had to wait until the new millennium for the general and systematic coverage of Paul Oliver’s three-volume Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Archi- tecture.8 That institution may now have stabilised a term initially borrowed from description of language and emphasising regional variation, but ‘vernacular’ has had to compete with other terms such as ‘primitive’ and ‘indigenous’, while even Oliver himself named an earlier book ‘Dwell- ings across the world’. Tellingly, it was completely absent from Pevsner’s Penguin Dictionary of Architecture of 1966. Whatever we choose to call it, ordinary building has always been the poor cousin, with a certain patronising assumption that it is somehow less designed, less deliberate, less imbued with art. This is not helped by a lack of written theory on the part of its practitioners, who had no need of it since they passed their skills down by demonstration and orally. It has meant that vernacular, when

5 C.J. Innocent, A History of English Building Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1916): Innocent was the son of Sheffield schools architect C.I. Innocent and taught architectural history at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture in its early years. The book contains photographs and drawings of timber-frame buildings in the Sheffield area. 6 Important exceptions of that time were Aldo van Eyck and Giancarlo De Carlo, both members of the architects’ group Team Ten. 7 Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects (New York: MOMI exhibition catalogue, c. 1970. 8 Paul Oliver, Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture, 3 Vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 72 peter blundell jones not simply ignored, has often been conceived as a kind of ‘other’ to high architecture, sharing the territory with other ‘others’.

From Gothic Revival to Arts and Crafts The major ‘other’ of nineteenth-century British architecture was Gothic, an initially disparaging title with anti-classical implications, but one which became a rallying cry.9 We are not concerned here with the stylistic details of French cathedrals which was Pevsner’s definition of Gothic, or with the romantic Gothic of Strawberry Hill and of Gothic novels, but rather with the Gothic Revival as supposedly instigated by A.W.N. Pugin and John Ruskin, which had a more practical and constructive character. I say supposedly because the term is retrospective: Pugin, in his principal writings, did not much use the term Gothic, preferring ‘Pointed’, ‘Christian’, or even ‘Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages’. It was Ruskin who confirmed the term while imbuing it with new aesthetic and ethical dimensions in his famous chapter ‘The Nature of Gothic’ in The Stones of Venice. It was there also that he assembled his tempting arguments about climate and culture that made Gothic essentially Nordic, despite starting with Venetian examples.10 This stance came at the right moment, for industry and empire had made the country rich, and its changing identity had garnered much ‘invention of tradition’,11 so the quest for a Nordic identity independent of Greece and Rome and no longer referring to the monuments of the grand tour is understandable. In fact it was probably the presence of Westminster Hall and Abbey that clinched the choice of Gothic for the new Houses of Parliament and so consolidated it as the national style: even so, the building is often described as ‘Tudor’,12 which conveniently combines a style category with emphasis on royalty, history, and nation. Growing self-consciousness and national pride must have helped discovery of the vernacular as a source, and putting so much of the nation’s

9 There were Gothic Revivals in France and Germany, but less influential than the Brit- ish one. For their interrelation see Georg Germann, Gothic Revival in Britain and Europe, sources, influences and ideas, (London: Lund Humphries, 1972). 10 A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasts, (London, 1836), and True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, (London, 1843), (various facsimile editions), and John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice ( in E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, eds, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, 13 vols, London 1903–12.) 11 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 12 Pugin himself started this when he called it “All Grecian, Sir, Tudor details on a classic body,” reported by his biographer Benjamin Ferrey, in Recollections of 1861. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 73 wealth into country houses meant addressing rural sites, but the Gothic Revival helped it along, for Pugin and Ruskin put much moral emphasis on solid, direct construction exploiting the nature of the material: a builderly concern (fig. 1, Pugin). The line between Gothic and the adoption of the vernacular is therefore hard to draw. William Butterfield and G.E. Street both concentrated on simple directly expressed construction, passing this ethos on to Philip Webb, whose first and best-known building was Red House for William Morris. It was designed when he was only 28 and had just been working for Street, along with Morris.13 The very name underlines the use of naked red brick as opposed to the prevalent stucco, and throughout the house the brick detailing was exploited and enjoyed, famously in the corbelled sewing window of the west side (fig. 2). The wellhead in the semi-enclosed court, which helped fulfil Morris’s notion of ‘living on a monastic plan’ was not primarily functional, as water could be drawn via a hand-pump in the kitchen, but it was the focus of a special drawing and designed to highlight qualities of material and craftsmanship (fig. 3). Here and in other details like the drawing room fireplace, there must have been very close collaboration between Webb and his builders, the architect thinking less like a designer than a craftsman: even a craftsman at play.14 Stylistically the house resembled the Gothic Revival rectories of Butterfield and Street, initially without much reference to the locality, but when five years later Morris asked Webb to design an extension to house the Burne-Joneses, he proposed the Kentish vernacular of exposed timber frame and tile-hanging. Webb went on to pursue a long career building about one house a year, generally making reference to the local buildings and their vocabulary of materials. So the switch from Gothic Revival to a freer interpretation of local style, which Webb’s biographer15 W.R. Lethaby later referred to as ‘our English free building’,16 was seamless, retaining the same principles. The furnishing of Red House was the starting point of the Morris firm, and of Morris’s aston- ishingly deep cultivation of traditional crafts like weaving, glass-making,

13 Peter Blundell Jones, Red House, Architects’ Journal 15/1/1986, pp. 36–56, part of Mas- ters of Building series. 14 I mean the tendency to push the limits of the skill, and so show off prowess. The point of the well’s roof involves smooth transition between timber structure, tiles, and lead capping, constructionally very tricky. The simple-looking drawing room fireplace is cut and rubbed work, with each brick individually shaped. 15 W.R. Lethaby, Philip Webb and his Work, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935). 16 W.R. Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), p. 100. 74 peter blundell jones

Figure 1. A.W.N. Pugin, plate from True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture 1853, contrasting an exposed Gothic roof structure with a neoclassical false ceiling on exaggerated hangers. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 75

Figure 2. Philip Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath 1859 for William Morris, the corbelled sewing window as seen from outside. 76 peter blundell jones

Figure 3. Philip Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath 1859 for William Morris, the well at the centre of the cloister-courtyard. and book-binding.17 Webb became the firm’s leading furniture designer. Getting to grips with making and craft skills involved the same ethos as designing the well-head. In the same period George Devey, another architect of country houses, also shifted his interest from the Gothic Revival to the vernacular, fascinated by old farmhouses and cottages which he drew and then emulated in works of his own (figs. 4, 5). As with Webb’s work, country houses could be better fitted to their sites if built in an irregular, rambling fashion, and their complex social content could be articulated in a number of wings,

17 See Morris’s writings in Christine Poulson, ed., William Morris on Art and Design, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 77

Figure 4. George Devey, design for a cottage, ink presentation drawing, Devey Collection, University of Sheffield. 78 peter blundell jones

Figure 5. George Devey, Cottage at St Alban’s Court, sketch, Devey Collection, University of Sheffield. with some ambiguity as to whether all had been built at once. Indeed the illusion that a house or cottage had ‘grown’ there and belonged to the site was an effect both admired and sought after. Devey passed on his ideas to his pupil C.F.A. Voysey, who designed builderly country houses with an austere simplicity that only served to emphasise their consummate craftsmanship in good solid materials. Ernest Gimson and the Barnsley brothers produced work even more imbued with genius loci, moving to the Cotswolds to build and set up their craft workshops there.18 All of these architects relied on local craftsmen with whom they worked closely, even improvising on site to make the most elegant and expressive use of craft techniques, but in the process rendering them self-conscious. By the end of the nineteenth century it was possible for an architect like Lethaby to design in a way that seemed almost free of applied style in its simplicity, use of local materials and techniques, and return to basic principles. His church at Brockhampton of 1901 (fig. 6) combines concrete vaults with thatch, and its windows reinterpret Gothic tracery in a surpris-

18 Mary Greensted, Gimson and the Barnsleys (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991). ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 79

Figure 6. W.R. Lethaby, Brockhampton Church, Herefordshire, 1901. ingly modern way.19 Discovered by chance, it would be very hard to date. One would not easily recognise his Melsetter House, Hoy, of 1898 (fig. 7) as being by the same architect, for it is typical of Lethaby that, having made a preliminary design before visiting the island, he abandoned it in favour of rebuilding the existing laird’s house at larger scale, maintaining its position and repeating aspects of its style and construction.20 Lethaby became the principal theorist of the Arts and Crafts and set up the Central School in London. He was surveyor to Westminster Abbey about which he wrote a couple of books, and he also produced books on Greek Building and Sancta Sophia.21 His most enduring contribution as architectural historian, however, is the study Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, a bold attempt to chart the origins and meaning of architectural

19 Peter Blundell Jones, All Saints Brockhampton, Architects’ Journal 15/8/1990, pp. 24–43, part of Masters of Building series. 20 Peter Blundell Jones, Melsetter House, Architects’ Journal 10/10/1990, pp. 36–57, part of Masters of Building series. 21 W.R. Lethaby, Greek Buildings (Batsford: London, 1908), and The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople (London: Macmillan, 1894). 80 peter blundell jones

Figure 7. W.R. Lethaby, Melsetter House, Hoy, Orkneys, 1898. symbolism worldwide by drawing on anthropological sources.22 It provided him and a few contemporaries with a new basis for architectural ornamentation, helping to release them from the bonds of the inherited styles. Lethaby was an intellectual, very much a thinking and knowing architect, despite his preference for the term ‘building’ over architecture, and despite a deep affection for the vernacular and country craft traditions based on his Morrisian belief in noble work. He often insisted that ‘art is the well-doing of what needs doing’ and saw it in every kind of creative activity from making a cart to weaving or baking a loaf of bread. Unlike Pevsner, he was prepared to call a group of Kentish oast houses ‘as fine in its way as a cathedral’,23 and the same book, Home and Country Arts of 1923, includes a sketch (fig. 8) of corn-ricks along the side of a field: I don’t know what most people call the work of ploughing and gardening and of rick-building, but I call it art and this art, competence, pride and care for accuracy and finish, is found everywhere where old customs are living. A kind correspondent has sent me a pretty sketch of some neatly thatched Northamptonshire corn-ricks. The artist thatcher who made these was not

22 W.R. Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, also retitled Architecture Nature and Magic (Duckworth: London, 1952) (1st ed 1892). 23 W.R. Lethaby, Home and Country Arts, (London: Home and Country, 1923), p. 102. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 81

Figure 8. Drawing of hayricks published in Lethaby’s book Home and Country Arts, 1923.

content until he had perched some straw birds on the peaks of the thatch- ing—these are triumphs, long may this race of birds continue to exist.24 That the Arts and Crafts architecture was considered ‘other’ to the classical tradition is vigorously shown by the reaction that had set in by 1910. Lethaby and his mentor Webb stopped building around the turn of the century, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the movement’s internationally known Glaswegian exponent, ran out of work and was reduced to easel painting. Edwin Lutyens, the most talented English architect of his generation, switched suddenly from an accomplished Arts and Crafts position with Deanery Gardens of 1904 to a full-blown classical revival with Heathcote of 1906, a rediscovery of what he called ‘the high game’. Arts and Crafts architects as good as Baillie Scott and Smith and Brewer went classical as if they had seen the light. The polarity is well recorded in the debates about architectural education which took place at the RIBA in 1910,25 where Lethaby found himself opposed by Charles Reilly of the Liverpool School of Architecture, the champion of Beaux Arts methods

24 Ibid., p. 110, emphasis in original. 25 RIBA Committee on Architectural Education minutes, 1910 (unpublished). 82 peter blundell jones and of ‘The Grand Manner’.26 Lethaby thought that architectural students should learn bricklaying with the bricklayers and engineering with the engineers, then style would take care of itself. New conditions would produce new kinds of building, which he optimistically called ‘the architecture of adventure’.27 Reilly insisted on the contrary that students should learn from examples that ‘had stood the test of time’, drawing the classical orders, making watercoloured drawings, and being taught how to make a composition on paper. He pioneered Civic Design as a new subject at Liv- erpool, and in a book of 1924 set the grand Neoclassical Somerset House as the ideal precedent for urban architecture. He also praised American classical banks, but dismissed Norman Shaw and the Arts and Crafts architects as being too individualistic, and fit only for the country. Architecture, for Reilly and his pupils, was all about the monumental. 28

The Arts and Crafts Exported Industrial progress and imperial wealth made late nineteenth-century Britain a creative place for architecture and design, and just as the Arts and Crafts movement was dying at home it was taken up abroad, reported in journals like Innendekoration and Moderne Bauformen, and informing the work of Arts and Crafts groups and schools from the Netherlands to Vienna. The profoundest piece of dissemination abroad was the three volume study Das englische Haus published by Hermann Muthesius in 1903–4. Muthesius came to England as cultural attaché from 1896, met the architects, and studied their buildings in detail. His book, untranslated until 1979 and only recently available in full in English, remains the best history of the movement.29 It looks minutely at country houses, from history and garden layout to the construction of a fire grate. The functional and builderly aspects were well understood, and Muthesius extolled the easy informality and lack of pomposity in his English examples. After returning to Berlin, he built numerous houses in the free English manner adding German details (fig. 9). He also founded the Deutsche Werkbund,

26 The Liverpool School of Architecture, founded in1895, was the first to receive RIBA recognition and until World War Two the most important in the country outside London. For its history see Architects’ Journal centenary issue, 11/5/1995. 27 Title of his RIBA lecture of 18th April 1910, printed in Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, pp. 66–95. 28 C.H. Reilly, Some Architectural Problems of Today (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1924). 29 Hermann Muthesius, The English House, (London: Crosby, Lockwood, and Staples, 1979). ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 83

Figure 9. Hermann Muthesius, Freudenberg House, Berlin, 1907–8. the German Arts and Crafts Society that became the cradle of German Modernism. Muthesius thus provided the essential link that enabled the newly immigrant Pevsner to link Morris with the Bauhaus in the book that joined his initial with his adopted country and made his reputation: Pioneers of the Modern Movement of 1936.30 Other leading architects of that period also drew on British examples: the Belgian born Henri van de Velde, foremost figure of the Art Nouveau, acknowledged a great debt to the Arts and Crafts, and the same influence was felt across Europe, giving rise in Germany to what was disparag- ingly called Jugendstil, the youth style, and in Scandinavia and Hungary to National Romanticism, again initially a dismissive label.31 It all reached a climax around 1900, and it is paradoxical that it sought the local within the international. For example, nowadays the work of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona is regarded as quintessentially Catalan, yet his bold structural experiments would have been unthinkable without the theorising of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the leading French representative of the Gothic Revival. Similarly Charles Rennie Mackintosh is considered quintessentially Glaswegian, but behind the touches of Scottish Baronial is a design

30 Faber & Faber, London: later retitled Pioneers of Modern Design (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960). 31 The best general source on this tendency is Barbara Miller Lane, National Romanti- cism and Modern Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 84 peter blundell jones philosophy wholly dependent on Pugin and Morris. Influence also flowed to and fro across the Atlantic, for the Shingle style added local detail to an Arts and Crafts plan, while the neo-Romanesque arches of H.H. Richard- son were adopted in Europe. In other words, the recycling of the local and vernacular was acutely self-conscious and took place against an international background, perhaps in reaction to increasing industrialisation, the fracture of tradition, and the development of communications. A clear example of this international mix is the beginning of Swedish National Romanticism. The painters at the heart of this tendency, Carl Larsson, Richard Bergh, and Anders Zorn, all spent years pursuing their vocation in the great European art capital Paris. But by the early 1890s all had returned to Sweden, where they produced their famous images of rural life and Nordic light, applying techniques learned in France to native material.32 The writer August Strindberg also went south, earning a reputation in France and Germany before returning to write his novels about Swedish rural life, such as The People of Hemsö. The impetus to rediscover roots was strong: when Zorn returned to his family home in rural Dalarna he moved an ancestral structure as his home to a more ideal site, collecting old farm buildings and reviving local crafts. More influential still was Artur Hazelius, the instigator of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm and the founder of Skansen, the first open-air museum in the world, a collection of regional farm buildings set up on a Stockholm island 1891 (fig. 10). As one of the city’s key cultural institutions, it has provided a profoundly influential image of traditional rural life for generations, a core of local identity. It does not consist merely of buildings but attempts to portray a traditional way of life with actors in period costume, craft demonstrations, and peri- odic festivals. ‘Skansen’ has become a generic term for open-air museums which are now essential repositories of material culture. There was much cross-fertilisation of national and international ideas as the case of the Stockholm architect Lars Israel Wahlman makes clear. Asked around the turn of the century to build a country house outside Gothenburg for the half-Scottish Dickson family, he produced at Tjöloholm in 1904, a typical Arts and Crafts work with a complex and articulated plan and much expressed craftsmanship (fig. 11). The British connection was unmistakable, and there were furniture and furnishings from Liberty’s in London. But a mere couple of years later Wahlman built himself a house in a Stockholm suburb (fig. 12), not only adopting the

32 Kirk Varnedoe, ed. Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting 1880–1910 (New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1983). ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 85

Figure 10. Skansen open air museum, Stockholm, interior of the Oktorp farmhouse from Halland, 18th century.

Figure 11. Lars Israel Wahlman, Tjöloholm Castle near Gothenburg, 1904. 86 peter blundell jones

Figure 12. Lars Israel Wahlman, own house ‘Tallom’ in a Stockholm suburb 1904–6. traditional Swedish farmhouse vocabulary of intersecting logs, but even transporting traditional carpenters from Dalarna to construct it. This was no mere stylistic affectation, for the principles of log construction were understood and exploited in a deep and fully engaged manner. Wahlman was determined to get to the bottom of it, just at the time when as Profes- sor at the Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (KTH Royal Institute of Technol- ogy) he was teaching the next generation: a topic to which we shall return. Meanwhile I should add that Wahlman went on producing what for his time was unprecedented and adventurous work: the log house episode was no permanent destination, only a stage along the way.

Town Planning: Sitte, Fischer, and Unwin As suggested above in relation to Lethaby and Reilly, the Arts and Crafts was considered rural while the business of Civic Design was claimed by ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 87 classicists, monumentalists, and lovers of geometric masterplans. The turn of the twentieth century saw the infancy of modern town-planning and included a tendency that reflected the ‘other’ point of view and is closely related to the material already discussed. The key inspiration was an unexpectedly successful book published in Vienna in 1899: City Planning on Artistic Principles by Camillo Sitte.33 It extolled the virtues of irregular medieval towns, the way the monuments sat hierarchically among ordinary buildings, the way views unfolded and streets led into squares. Although predominantly visual in its concerns, it did provoke a new appreciation of the integrity and topographic quality of towns that had grown up organically rather than being deliberately planned, and it suggested methods by which their virtues might be emulated. It also necessarily took into account ordinary vernacular buildings and their role in the townscape. Sitte’s justification of irregularity and asymmetry and his championing of the Medieval naturally went down well with architects brought up on Gothic Revival ideas, and for Raymond Unwin, planner of Letchworth and of other garden cities, Sitte’s aesthetic attitudes rhymed well with an Arts and Crafts philosophy. But Sitte’s work had arguably profounder consequences nearer home in the work of the great South German architect and teacher Theodor Fischer. Fischer (1862–1938) was the first president of the Deutsche Werkbund in 1907, showing his association with Muthesius and Arts and Crafts interests. But his career started in 1893 as the first holder of the office of planner for the expansion of Munich, and as one of Sitte’s main disseminators. Like other large cities in Europe the capital of Bavaria had started to sprawl, and there had been decades of debate about how this should be regulated, including a masterplanning competition. When Fischer was appointed he rejected the Baroque grid suggested for the northern outskirts by an earlier city architect, instead developing his own meandering arrangement of the area based on existing roads and boundaries, accepting “the lines and wrinkles of the ground” as he called them.34 He determined the positions of major squares, recommending that public buildings occupy strategic sites to mark them as monuments and to entice the public through in Sit- tesque manner (fig. 13). He also set up a hierarchy of streets, imposing a ranking system of buildings by height. Implementation proved easier than

33 Most easily accessible in translation in George R. Collins, Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City Planning (London: Phaidon, 1965). 34 Winfried Nerdinger, Theodor Fischer: Architekt und Städtebauer 1862–1938 (Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1988; Munich 1990). 88 peter blundell jones

Figure 13. Theodor Fischer, replanning scheme for Munich Bogenhausen, 1898, irregular due to embracing given features, from Theodor Fischer by Winfried Nerdinger. with a geometric plan, thanks to working with existing property boundaries rather than defying them at every turn. Through working with the given, a sense of genius loci was preserved and even enhanced. Fischer’s regulating plan for Munich-Schwabing remained in force for more than half a century, producing a townscape that now seems deceptively traditional, as if it had grown. It is more harmonious than the rigid imposition of most later planning, if also largely invisible.35 Fischer’s planning experience deeply affected his own designs for buildings, which proliferated around the turn of the century. Naturally, he tended to start with the site, and the duties that the building owed to

35 Ibid. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 89

Figure 14. Theodor Fischer, school on Elisabethplatz, Munich 1901, a public building used to mark a public square. its surroundings. Sometimes he would take on one of the landmark sites in the unfolding street pattern of his general plan, as with the secondary school in Munich’s Elisabethstrasse with its corner tower (fig. 14). But even when he had no say in the general plan he was very concerned with responding to the context. Typical is his post-office building in Hall, Tyrol, which he published along with an entire plan of the old walled town to show the relationship (fig. 15). Its small tower appeared in the skyline of the town perfectly ranked among other towers, neither over- nor under- stated. The building’s strangely irregular plan followed the geometry of the plot. Fischer also sought a stylistic evocation of genius loci. He spoke of “learning to speak Swabian, Bavarian, Tyrolean”, applying the linguistic metaphor to local building habits and methods in the region where he was working. This was no blind provincialism, but a sophisticated re-reading. Going further still, he would comb the town for examples of architectural details to be reinterpreted in the new building, never quoting them exactly, but taking them as inspiration. In that way he hoped to make his buildings blend in and belong, even though they were also modern for their time. A century later few have survived the depredations of more drastic later interventions by architects and road-planners, which when not destroying Fischer’s actual buildings, have changed the contexts to which they were so delicately geared. 90 peter blundell jones

Figure 15. Theodor Fischer, Post office building in Hall, Tyrol, Austria, 1910, building ‘Tyrolean’.

Theodor Fischer also became a famous teacher, Professor first in Munich and later in Stuttgart, and among his pupils were the leaders of the organic tendency in German Modernist architecture: Hugo Häring, Bruno Taut, Ernst May, and Erich Mendelsohn.36 Although their work appears at first to have nothing in common with that of Fischer, all showed a marked concern for context and a taste for asymmetries and irregularities. Drawing on Fischer’s practice of looking for clues about what a building ‘wanted to become’ by interrogating its local context, Häring developed a philosophy of organic design both from the inside out and the outside in, adding a functionalist component. Fittingly for a case of the ‘other’ tradition, his masterpiece was a cowshed (fig. 16).37 While orthodox Mod- ernists like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius drew on the classical tradition, particularly its formality and its normalising tendency, this other group drew more on the irregular, informal tradition described above. But the dual inheritance could coexist within a single sensibility,

36 Ibid., pp. 90–94. 37 See Peter Blundell Jones, Hugo Häring: the Organic versus the Geometric (Fellbach: Edition Axel Menges, 1999). See also Blundell Jones, Modern Architecture Through Case Studies (Architectural Press, imprint of Elsevier Science: Oxford, July 2002), Chapter 2. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 91

Figure 16. Hugo Häring, Garkau farm, near Lübeck, Germany, 1924–5: functional forms and natural materials. as can be dramatically illustrated with reference to the Swedish architects Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz.

Asplund and Lewerentz: A Dual Inheritance Asplund was the undisputed leader of Swedish Modernism, which burst onto the scene with his Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. But only two years earlier he had completed the markedly monumental Stockholm City Library, pinnacle of the Swedish Neoclassical revival. A decade earlier he had designed the tiny ‘primitive’ Chapel at Stockholm’s Woodland Cem- etery, a decidedly ‘vernacular’ project (fig. 17), and in 1913 he won his first 92 peter blundell jones

Figure 17. Gunnar Asplund, Woodland Chapel, Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm 1920. competition project for a school at Karlshamn in a decidedly National Romantic vein. He could manage it all, and the reason is not hard to see. As a student in the early years of the century he had been taught by the best National Romantic architects, not only Lars Israel Wahlman, mentioned earlier for his log house, but also Carl Westman and Ragnar Öst- berg. In 1913–14 he funded his own grand tour through France and Italy down to North Africa, filling sketch books both with the usual classical temples and with vernacular, informal buildings. Soon after his return he won, in partnership with contemporary and fellow student Sigurd Lewer- entz, the competition for the Woodland Cemetery. They had submitted a proposal of almost extreme informality. While others cleared the ground to impose monumental neoclassical proposals with axial geometric frameworks, they advocated preserving the indigenous forest as a graveyard, carving a series of meandering routes through it and opening clearings for the chapels. Later, passing through a classical phase around 1919, the two architects formalised parts of it, but they went on making careful adjustments resulting in a hauntingly poetic memorial landscape, which is all the better for its 25 years of development: it was completed in 1940. One incident in this long development shows clearly Asplund’s ability to swing ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 93

Figure 18. Gunnar Asplund, design for Little Chapel, 1918, an earlier version of the same project: Swedish Architecture Museum, Stockholm. between the classical/formal and the vernacular/informal: it concerns the design of the Woodland Chapel. Having worked on the project for three years, by 1918 the architects were itching to make a culminating gesture by building a chapel, so Asplund proposed the so-called ‘Little Chapel’ (fig. 18), sited on the top of the hill on the entry axis of the cemetery. Despite the name, it had to make a big impression to command the site, and Asplund gave it a primitive classical form and relatively large proportions. Then there were misgivings about the budget, and a smaller wooden structure was suggested instead. Inspired by a recent publication about the eighteenth-century Danish estate Liselund, Asplund changed his project completely. He left the hill- top site for a later, larger building and proposed a small wooden chapel hidden in the wood (fig. 17), like a woodcutter’s cottage which one might stumble across by accident. Instead of being large and awesome it was small and intimate, with the lowest possible eaves and domestic windows. The change between these projects shows not only the swing between traditions but also the sensitivity of interpretation. That Lewerentz could play the same game is shown by the contrast between his starkly neoclassical Chapel of the Resurrection of 1926—the next one built at the Woodland Cemetery—and an earlier chapel at Kvarnsveden on the more primitive model with a sheltering roof like Asplund’s. The conventional and long-dominant histories of Modernism suggest a complete break with the past around 1930 in favour of a rational and functional design philosophy, but although Asplund and Lewerentz were the 94 peter blundell jones

Figure 19. Gunnar Asplund Woodland Crematorium, Stockholm 1940. leaders of Modernism, which was actually called ‘Functionalism’ in Scan- dinavia, they never forgot their history. Within their modernist work, they continued to draw on the dual tradition, and this is most easily proved with reference to two late Asplund works: the Crematorium at the Wood- land Cemetery of 1940 (fig. 19) and his own summerhouse at Stennäs of 1938 (fig. 20). The Crematorium is technically efficient and thoroughly thought through in its operative details as one might expect of a ‘functionalist’, but it has become world-famous because of the way the ceremonial side is handled. The image and experience of the building is dominated by its great portico on the shoulder of the hill, not strictly a ‘functional’ element, but the crown of the whole cemetery. It is supported by rows of columns in a way markedly reminiscent of a classical temple, yet it is actually not free-standing, lacks a stepped base, capitals and detailed entab- lature, and has an impluvium instead of the cella. It is the setting that makes this simple piece of building so striking, and refers back perhaps to sketches Asplund had made of temples in Sicily. He caught something of their haunting mood without quoting them directly. By contrast, when ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 95

Figure 20. Gunnar Asplund summer house at Stennäs, 1937–40, fireplace. building himself a weekend house in a very wild coastal spot, Asplund not only reinterpreted in a modern way the simplicity of the timber cabin, but played up the stuccoed hearth as the heart and focus of the house, as it had been in old Swedish farmhouses. In a moment of genius he even dramatised its directness by burning logs on an extension of the stairs. No pair of examples shows more strongly the continuity, within a Modernist way of working, of these contrasting inherited traditions. 96 peter blundell jones

Conclusion: The Voice of the People May I lead you to the shores of a mountain lake? The sky is blue, the water green, and everything is profoundly peaceful. Mountains and clouds are reflected in the lake, and so are houses, farm-yards, court-yards and chapels. These do not seem man-made, but more like the product of God’s workshop, like the mountains and trees, the clouds and the blue sky. And everything breathes beauty and tranquillity. Ah, what is that? A false note in this harmony. Like an unwelcome scream. In the centre, beneath the peasants’ homes which were created not by them but by God stands a villa. Is it the product of a good or a bad architect? I do not know. I only know that peace, tranquillity and beauty are no more.38 So opens the famous essay ‘Architecture’ of 1910 by the great Austrian architect and intellectual Adolf Loos. It was part of his general tirade against applied style and ornament, and he perhaps exaggerated the extent to which the productions of the good peasants were ‘instinctive’ but it shows respect for the quality of the vernacular tradition and even some nostalgia by the lettered for the innocence of the unlettered. He even went so far as to claim that the town-dweller ‘has no culture’, in contrast with the peasant. In the intervening century, studies of vernacular building and progress in anthropological theory have given us a much deeper understanding of the ways in which traditional building reflected society, both as a con- tainer and organiser of action and as a repository of meaning in an orally- based world. As a result, respect for traditional building has grown and there has been a bid for deeper understanding just as it has been dying as a practice and disappearing as fabric. Examples as given above show how sensitive and talented architects have been quietly drawing on vernacular traditions, the better to understand how architecture works, and to give their own productions some roots. Meanwhile enormous changes have taken place in the built world due to rising populations, extraordinary increases in communications, and the endless technological changes due to machine production, availability of motive power, cars, television, virtual realities, and so on. Along with these changing material demands have come radical revisions in the roles of builder and architect, the former no longer a craftsman but a manager of technological processes, the latter a bureaucrat required in the production of living space whose

38 Adolf Loos, Architecture 1910, included in translation in Tim Benton, Charlotte Ben- ton and Denis Sharp, Form and Function (Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1975), pp. 41–45. ideas of folk and nation in european architecture 97 primary role has become to mediate with other bureaucrats. No longer primarily the artist dedicated to tombs and monuments, the architect or his/her equivalent must now be involved in every building task down to the most humble, and his/her expertise lies as much in negotiating the complexity of the process and meeting all the demands as in the actual act of design. Bureaucratic imperatives now make it almost impossible for an ordinary person to build a house for him/herself, even given the land and the money. The building regulations determine increasingly how he/she should live and how the money should be spent. Another part of the bureaucratic apparatus that has developed from its infancy a century ago is the discipline of town-planning. Few would doubt its necessity, yet many might question whether it had made places more beautiful. From Jacques Tati’s films such as Playtime to Prince Charles’s forays into architecture, or Rolf Keller’s earlier and more serious Building as Pol- lution39 there has been a chorus of complaint about ‘modern architecture’ as ugly, inefficient, and alienating. Some of this focuses on styles of building perceived as unfamiliar, on the loss of traditional ornament and craftsmanship, but perhaps more pertinent was the priority given, particularly in the 1960s, for building forms driven very largely by the imperatives of machine-based construction, and nakedly expressing that fact. This is an obvious target, visible in the much-hated tower blocks being pulled down in Britain, Europe and the USA. The yet larger underlying problem, however, is the way that we have nearly all been expropriated from the building process, lamely accepting that we must simply put up with the places in which we are expected to dwell or to work, being given no say in the way they are arranged. The voice of the people is silenced. If we wish it to be heard again we should perhaps set limits on the increasing stranglehold of regulations and, on the positive side, we should promote genuine participation.40

39 Rolf Keller, Bauen als Umweltzerstörung (Zurich: Artemis, 1973). 40 Much so-called participation gives little real choice and is present largely as a political sop. See Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu, and Jeremy Till, eds, Architecture and Participation, (London & New York: Spon Press, 2005).

The Regional and the Global: Folk Culture at World’s Fairs and the Reinvention of the Nation

Angela Schwarz

Introduction Why still have world’s fairs? Ironically, the question was brought up at a time when international expositions were more popular then ever: in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Critical observers predicted the end of this kind of event. French writer Gustave Flaubert criticised world’s fairs for an “égalité de tout”.1 German economist Werner Sombart saw them as the epitome of egalitarianism, a kind of democratic principle run wild.2 In fact, one could not help but notice a certain tendency, which had been inherent in the great exhibitions since 1851, a tendency to bring out similarities between the participants. For one, presenting goods of the same category in one place, led to a heightened sense of competition. Pro- ducers saw themselves forced not only to adjust to production standards of products but to methods of exhibiting them as well.3 In a complex process of interaction a set of rules developed that was to determine the shape and course (order of events) of world’s fairs. Secondly, participating individuals and nations wanted to convey specific messages to their countrymen as well as to the members of other nations. In order to make sure that these messages could be understood, they used symbols others were able to decode easily. Thus, a kind of “exhibition language”4 gradually

1 “Egalité de tout, du bien et du mal, du beau et du laid, de l‘insignifiant et du caracté- ristique. Exaltation de la statistique. Il n’y a de vrai que les phénomènes.” Gustave Flaubert, quoted in Ulrike Weber-Felber, “Severin Heinisch, Ausstellungen. Zur Geschichte eines Mediums”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft Vol. 2, No. 4, (1991): 19. 2 Werner Sombart, “Die Ausstellung”, Morgen. Wochenschrift für deutsche Kultur (Febru- ary 28, 1908), pp. 250 and 254. 3 Cf. Burton Benedict, The Anthropology of World’s Fairs. The San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (Aldershot: Scolar Press 1983), p. 15. 4 Bjarne Stoklund, “The Role of International Exhibitions in the Construction of National Cultures in the 19th Century”, Ethnologia Europaea, Vol. 24, No. 1, (1994): 38: “The rapid succession of international exhibitions in the latter half of the 19th century can be 100 angela schwarz evolved, a means of communication people first in Europe, then in North America and finally all over the world would come to comprehend. In consequence, world’s fairs were most effective media, promoting a rapprochement of European nations in economic, social and cultural respects. In the age of mass production and mass media they were important—though not the only—factors in bringing about a similarity of Euro- pean cultures. Following a term coined by the Swedish ethnologist Orvar Löfgren, who has studied the formation processes of national identity, one might say that the age saw the emergence of an “international cultural grammar”.5 This chapter argues that, to a considerable degree, the evolution of a “cultural grammar” was due to transfer processes from one great exhibition to another. Exhibits, ways of presentation, structures that were used to make the light of one country shine most brilliantly were closely studied by and later integrated into the presentation of other countries at subsequent expositions. Such forms of emulation, the focus of this paper, could even be found in presentations employed in shaping the imagined community, that is the nation. At a time when industrialisation had transformed landscapes and societies, and had nearly eradicated the socio-economic basis of ‘folk’, when transformations whose results we, today, have come to call “globalisation” were well under way, folk culture—or rather a certain type or interpretation of folk culture—was (re-)discovered as an essential national characteristic and a means of conceptualising the nation. I want to draw attention to the folkloristic reconstructions at nineteenth-century international expositions, the way they were organised to combine the regional and the national, and the transfer occurring between European nations’ staging of folk culture, eventually producing an international cultural grammar.

seen as a sort of relay race, in which ideas and innovations introduced at one exhibition, are resumed and elaborated upon at the next one. In this way a set of rules of staging and a system of rituals are developed, which become regulars in the great exhibitions, not only the international, but also the geographically more delimited ones.” 5 Orvar Löfgren, “The Nationalization of Culture”, Ethnologia Europaea, Vol. 19, No. 1, (1989): 21–22. As he continues to point out: “During the nineteenth century it was not only a concept of national folk culture that was circulated between (mainly) European nations, but also guidelines for the proper establishment of institutions like national folk museums and archives.” (p. 22). the regional and the global 101

World’s Fairs and Cultural Transfer: A Theoretical Approach During the last two decades extensive research has been done in fields that offer ways to approach the subject matter at hand. Firstly, historiography in general has developed a new interest in expositions, from the universal down to the regional ones of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Despite the fact that certain aspects have already been studied in detail, for example, ‘exoticism’ or colonial displays or the relationship between city and exhibition grounds, one cannot but notice the omissions.6 Displays from the participants’ colonies covered a broad spectrum of items from single artistic objects to complete villages. To visitors of the fairs the villages offered a tamed version of colonial peoples and lifestyles Westerners envisioned as barbaric or alien.7 In addition to this encounter of Europeans with diverse overseas cultures, ethnologists and historians have discovered another field of study, one that might be described as a kind of ‘next-door exoticism’. This term refers to the presentations of folk culture at expositions, objects of everyday life, a farmhouse, a couple of houses arranged to create the illusion of a village come to life at the fair and thus in the midst of a bustling city. These presentations displayed a folk culture no longer reminding an onlooker of hard work and a tedious life but a foreign world full of wonder and fascination. Another mode to approach the subject starts out from more recent studies on nationalism and its history. In his widely noted book on the ‘invention’ of the nation Benedict Anderson has stressed the symbols, images and myths created in the process. In the manner of this interpretation nation has come to be studied as a cultural practice.8 Thus, to study the way items of folk culture were showcased at world’s fairs helps to

6 Cf. Alexander C.T. Geppert, “Welttheater: Die Geschichte des europäischen Ausstel- lungswesens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ein Forschungsbericht”, Neue Politische Literatur, Vol. 47, (2002): 33f., and Alexander C.T. Geppert, Jean Coffey and Tammy Lau, Interna- tional Exhibitions, Expositions Universelles and World’s Fairs, 1851–2005: A Bibliography, www.csufresno.edu/library/subjectresources/specialcollections/worldfairs/bibliographies .html. 30/04/2012. 7 Cf. R. Debusmann, J. Riesz, eds, Kolonialausstellungen—Begegnung mit Afrika? (Frankfurt am Main: IKO—Verlag für interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1995); Sylviane Leprun, Le Théâtre des Colonies. Scénographie, acteurs et discours de l’imaginaire dans les expositions 1855–1937, (Paris: Edition L’Harmattan, 1986), Burton Benedict, “International Exhibitions and National Identity”, Anthropology Today Vol. 7, No. 3, (1991): 5–9. 8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Cf. for instance Etienne François, Hannes Siegrist and Jakob Vogel, eds, Nation und Emotion. Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich. 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995). 102 angela schwarz understand how national symbols were created and influenced people’s conceptions. More recently, some studies on nationalism have even included world’s fairs in their attempt to offer a comprehensive analysis how the nation was culturally constructed in the decades before the First World War.9 Only a few, though, have actually looked into the role played by folk culture in these events—which has been systematically recorded for the first time in Martin Wörner’s dissertation published in 1999.10 A comparative study that would take into view the transnational intercon- nections has not been carried out yet. Two influential exceptions to the rule should be mentioned: articles by the Danish ethnologist Bjarne Stok- lund and his Dutch colleague Adriaan de Jong—in cooperation with Mette Skougaard—, both of whom have examined the interrelation between expositions and folk and open air museums.11 A third approach is suggested by research on intercultural exchanges. A history of transfer processes deals first and foremost with influences, transference, the effects of an interconnectedness that rewrites the identities of the individuals, groups or nations involved.12 This is what makes it

9 See for the French context Wolfram Kaiser, “Vive la France! Vive la République? The Cultural Construction of French Identity at the World’s Exhibitions in Paris 1855–1900”, National Identities, Vol. 1, No. 3, (1999): 227–244; for the German context see Christoph Cornelißen, “Die politische und kulturelle Repräsentation des Deutschen Reiches auf den Weltausstellungen des 19. Jahrhunderts”, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Vol. 52, (2001): 148–161; and Eckhardt Fuchs, “Nationale Repräsentation, kulturelle Identität und imperiale Hegemonie auf den Weltausstellungen. Einleitende Bemerkungen”, Compa- rativ, Vol. 9, No. 5/6, (1999): 8–14. 10 Martin Wörner, Vergnügung und Belehrung. Volkskultur auf den Weltausstellungen 1851–1900 (Münster, München, Berlin, New York: Waxmann, 1999). 11 Adriaan de Jong, “Volkskunde im Freien. Musealisierung und Nationalisierung des Landlebens 1850–1920”, Ethnologia Europaea, Vol. 24, No. 2, (1994): 139–148, Adriaan de Jong, Mette Skougaard, “The Hindeloopen and the Amager Rooms. Two Examples of an Historical Museum Phenomenon”, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 5, No. 2, (1993), pp. 165–178, Bjarne Stoklund, “International Exhibitions and the New Museum Concept in the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century”, Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 23, (1993): 87–113, and Stoklund, “The Role of International Exhibitions”, pp. 35–44. Since the early nineteen-nineties a number of articles has been published on the subject. However, most of them offer only very short glimpses into the presentation of folk culture as the epitome of the nation, only little insight, if any, into transfer processes involved in constructing the nation by showcasing folk culture. Cf. e.g. Bernward Deneke, “Volkskunst und nationale Identität 1870–1914”, in Herbert Nikitsch and Bernhard Tschofen, eds, Volkskunst. Refe- rate der Österreichischen Volkskundetagung 1995 (Wien: Verein für Volkskunde, 1997), pp. 13–38; Monika Lackner, “Pasture Romance. Installation, National Self-Representation and Cultural Demarcation at the Vienna World Fair 1873”, Teppo Korhonen, ed., Making and Breaking of Borders, (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2003): 303–309. 12 Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Vol. 28, (2002): 614. See also pp. 608, 623, 630. the regional and the global 103 so attractive for anyone aspiring to a truly European historiography which does not simply add together the history of a number of nation states without delving deeply into interactions and their effects particularly on the level of ideas and mentalities. Expositions assembled the world in one place. What better place could there be to explore transfer processes? Which structures, technologies, ideas, presentations of one country were held to be worth emulating and were then copied? For what reasons and with what intentions did participants of the fairs do so? How did the element which was transferred from one context to the other change in the process? These are questions which do not only help to better understand how expositions worked as huge fora of communication,13 but which point to the origins of certain phenomena that were transplanted from the fairs into society at large. The interconnectedness has hardly been touched upon yet, though the field is vast and well worth exploring. For “expositions universelles” and colonial, regional or industrial exhibitions were closely related, this type of event was in its turn interlinked with contemporary museum culture, the culture of visual communication, and leisure culture. Most strikingly, a transfer from one national context to another could even take place where matters of the core issue, of defining that which constituted a specific nation, were affected. What took place during such transfers was nothing less than the ‘invention of tradition’, that is the construction of an identity defined as national.14 The three approaches, woven into one, guide my approach to the case studies below, which demonstrate graphically how the process of inventing a tradition worked in a particular context.

From Paris to Vienna: Folk Culture as a National Symbol The International Exhibition in Paris in 1867, the fourth of the kind, saw either the birth or the culmination of many of the elements that were to define expositions for decades to come. For the first time, folk culture appeared not only in show cases, so to speak, but stepped out into the open in the shape of reconstructed individual farm houses, cottages or

13 Bjarne Stoklund focuses on the aspect of visual communication when using the term “fora of communication”. Cf. Stoklund, “The Role of International Exhibitions”, p. 38. 14 Hobsbawm understands ‘invented tradition’ as “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to incul- cate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” See his ‘Introduction’ in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 104 angela schwarz

Figure 1. Parc étranger, Paris 1867. Taken from Martin Wörner, Die Welt an einem Ort, Berlin: Reimer 2000, p. 37. Source: Eugène Rimmel, Recollections of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, London: Chapman and Hall, 1868, no page. even villages. They were either erected as official contributions by participating countries or as eye-catchers by private companies. New possibilities arose when organisers had decided to invite the 44 nations taking part in the event of 1867 to construct edifices typical of their country outside the central exhibition building. In consequence, 175 structures were assembled on the Champs de Mars in what was called the “Parc étranger”, a new feature of expositions which was to become typical of the medium. In following this invitation participants generally concentrated on well- known buildings of their high culture when choosing their symbol of a typical edifice. However, some—Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzer- land among them—opted for examples of rural or folkloric architecture. When Frédéric Le Play (1806–1882), engineer, social reformer and general commissioner of the exposition, came up with the idea of an additional category of exhibits within the official section of the fair, more countries chose to present themselves with objects of folk culture. Le Play invited participants to show working-class cottages characteristic of their country in order to stimulate a search for an ideal type of housing for the industrial workers and their families. This was supposed to solve the social the regional and the global 105

Figure 2. ‘Austrian village’. Taken from Martin Wörner, Vergnügung und Beleh- rung, Münster, New York: Waxmann 1999, p. 55. Source: François Ducuing (Ed.): L’Exposition Universelle de 1867 illustrée, Paris 1867, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 21. question, at least in part. In the end the majority of participants preferred to display national vernacular architecture or particularities of their folk culture rather than working-class houses: Thus, the competition of goods and their producers had been extended to include that of cultures. Norway and Sweden, for instance, exhibited two-storey loft-stores, Denmark a small half-timbered house and the Netherlands a peasant cottage. Austria-Hungary even showcased seven houses from a rural context arranged to form what was called “an Austrian village”, including farm houses from Galicia, Upper Austria, Hungary, the Tyrol and a village tav- ern. These seven houses, supposedly a materialisation of rural life without any sugar-coating, were designed to give an encompassing idea of rural architecture from all the heterogeneous parts of the monarchy.15 One of the larger ensembles of rural buildings in the Parc étranger was exhibited by Russia. It included a stable, two tents of nomadic peoples and an idealised reconstruction of two Russian farm houses. Russians far away from their country were to find in them a reminder of home,

15 Cf. “Die Nationalpavillons auf dem pariser Marsfeld”, Illustrirte Zeitung, No. 1244, (4 May 1867), p. 312. 106 angela schwarz foreigners were to get “a comprehensive idea of Russian facilities”. Some of the visitors described the ethnographic collections as realistic, others thought that the “stuffed Russians in national costume”,16 as one of them described the life-size mannequins in attire supposedly typical of this social and ethnographic context, seemed to have stepped right out of an opera.17 The buildings were believed to be nothing more than an “architectural fantasy”, a “joli joujou” rather than true to life, in light of the proverbial impoverishment of the Russian peasant population. The writer of an article in the French paper Le Correspondant could not help mocking: “If the Russian farmer lives in houses like these, I know a few Parisian bourgeois, and I am speaking of the wealthiest, who would most gladly exchange their villa for his hut.”18 Criticism such as this could not diminish the popularity of folkloristic ensembles. On the contrary, the most popular exhibits at Paris in 1867 inspired other countries to copy them. From 1867 onwards, the presentation of objects depicting a rural, allegedly simple way of life was firmly established as an element of expositions. Unthought-out and unsystematic in Paris, the erection of model houses and peasant cottages was to be an integrated element of the official part of the exposition in Vienna in 1873. Its General-Director Wilhelm Freiherr von Schwarz-Senborn19 had been to Paris in 1867 as a member of the Austrian exhibition delegation. He knew the folk culture exhibits of that show well. According to his concept, the “Prater”—today well-known as a fairground—was to house a truly “international village” with farm houses from all over the world. He transferred Le Play’s idea of improving the situation of the working classes into a rural context and attached to it a claim to scientific validity. In reality his lofty ideas had to be drastically reduced. In the end the ‘village’ on display in Vienna only consisted of nine farmhouses, seven of

16 Friedrich Pecht, Kunst und Kunstindustrie auf der Weltausstellung von 1867. Pariser Briefe (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1867), p. 210. [“Das Innere derselben ist vollständig möblirt und mit ausgestopften Russen in der Nationaltracht bevölkert . . .”] 17 Cf. Victor Fournel, “Voyage à travers l’Exposition universelle. Notes d’un touriste”, Le Correspondant. Recueil périodique, Vol. 70, (April 1867), p. 978. 18 Ibid., p. 979 [“Si le paysan russe a de pareils logis, je sais bien des bourgeois pari- siens, je dis des plus huppés, qui échangeraient avec empressement leur villa contre sa cabane.”] 19 Reputed to have acted as the “crisis manager” of the Austrian displays at world’s fairs after 1851, as a recent study puts it, he particularly commended himself for the position in 1873. Cf. Ulrike Felber, Elke Krasny, and Christan Rapp, Smart Exports. Österreich auf den Weltausstellungen 1851–2000 (Wien: Brandstätter, 2000), p. 55. the regional and the global 107 which had come from the provinces of Austria-Hungary.20 Trying to depict the host country’s own folk culture as authentically as possible, Schwarz- Senborn harked back to another element that had proved popular at the previous Paris event.21 Some of the houses were actually ‘inhabited’ by “indigenous residents”22 or “von einem Originallandmann der zu diesem Zweck aus der fernen Heimat mit seiner Familie nach Wien gekommen ist”,23 i.e. peasant couples and their children who were to stage typical country life for the mainly middle-class visitors. In effect, visitors commented extensively on the successful reproduction of nativeness and local ambience.24 Although the integration of the “international village” remained a feature exclusive to the Vienna exposition, the copiousness of folk culture and historic reconstructions was increased in subsequent fairs. It was to be expected that primarily agrarian nations such as Austria-Hungary, Switzerland or the Scandinavian states were most active in the field, since folk culture went a long way to flaunt national self-confidence. But even industrial nations fell back on folk culture as one means of national self- portrayal. The search for continuity in a world of change and an emerging scientific study of this culture both fostered this tendency. This leads on to the second case study.

From Paris to Copenhagen: An Image of Rural Life Paris 1867 had set the tone, Vienna tried to add a scientific element to the staging of folk culture. When organisers started with preparations for the exposition in Paris in 1878, they took up the challenge to surpass the preceding events.

20 The two non-Austrian cottages were presented by Germany (an Alsatian farmhouse) and Russia. Cf. Jutta Pemsel, Die Wiener Weltausstellung. Das gründerzeitliche Wien am Wendepunkt, (Wien, Köln: Böhlau, 1989), and Stoklund, “The Role of International Exhi- bitions”, p. 41. 21 Cf. Verdensudstillingen i Paris 1867. En Veiledning for Besøgende og Udstillere (Kopen- hagen: Fr. Wøldike, 1867), quoted in Stoklund, “International Exhibitions and the New Museum Concept”, p. 103. 22 Cf. Karl Julius Schröer, “Das Bauernhaus mit seiner Einrichtung und seinem Geräthe (Gruppe XX)”, in General-Direction der Wiener Weltausstellung, ed., Officieller Ausstel- lungs-Bericht (Wien: K.K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1874), No. 51, p. 24. [“eingeborenen Insassen”] 23 Cf. Von der wiener Weltausstellung, subheading: “Das siebenbürgisch-sächsische Bauernhaus”, Ilustrirte Zeitung, Vol. 60, No. 1563, (14 June 1873), p. 462. 24 Cf. ibid., pp. 459 and 462. 108 angela schwarz

The members of the Dutch committee in charge of conceiving their country’s contribution had been given a clear-cut commission: They were to devise an exhibit of a group of life-size dummies similar to the one presented by Sweden in 1867. Arranged in romantic folk life scenes, based on popular genre paintings, they had drawn large admiring crowds. Two members of the Dutch committee, Herman F.C. Ten Kate and Pieter Stor- tenbeker, had been impressed by an exhibit they had seen at the first Historical Exhibition of Frisia—in the Dutch province—in 1877: a completely furnished room taken from the West-Frisian fishing village of Hindeloopen. What was first and foremost specific (if not exclusive) to a certain village was raised to represent the whole province of Frisia. When the Hindeloopen room was reassembled in Paris in 1878, following the recommendation of the committee, it was taken as the ethnological interior of the Netherlands.25 Visitors were impressed not only because they saw a room with four walls, a roof, and many details to admire such as wall carvings and the mannequins in folk costumes staging the preparations for a christening. Rather, the Dutch exhibit upstaged the much more ambitious Swedish displays because the room was open to the public—a walkable piece of the past, as it seemed. This may seem trivial today, but at the time it was an ingenious idea, for visitors found themselves in a position to perceive the exhibit in a new way. Used to seeing objects in showcases, behind bars so to speak, in ways that always reminded viewers of the distance between themselves and the objects, they now stepped into the room and changed from mere observers into participants of the scene acted out for them. One step and they entered another country, a fascinatingly alien rural culture, another time. A new method of exhibiting objects was born, soon to be adopted not only by international and national exhibitions but by folk museums all over Europe. One of the admirers of the Hindeloopen room at the exposition in 1878 was Bernhard Olsen, Director of the Tivoli in Copenhagen. He praised it for it being so real, so true to life—whereas he rejected the Swedish contribution to the same fair, designed by Artur Hazelius, as theatrical

25 Cf. De Jong, “Volkskunde im Freien”, p. 142. Some held the ethnographic ensemble to be the cornerstone of the success attributed to the contribution by the Netherlands as a whole, although the folklore elements amounted to only a small part of the objects put on display by this country. Cf. J. de Vries, In “Nederland”, Eigen Haard, Vol. 31, (1878), p. 295, and Emile Réaux, in L’Europe diplomatique. Gazette internationale, (25 July 1878), quoted in de Jong/Skougaard, p. 166. the regional and the global 109

Figure 3. Contemporary woodcut showing visitors (on the right) to the Hindeloopen room, Paris 1878. Taken from Adriaan de Jong, Mette Skougaard, “The Hindeloopen and the Amager Rooms. Two Examples of an Historical Museum Phenomenon”, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1993, p. 167. Source: Photo Popken, Frisian Museum Leeuwarden. and phoney.26 When Olsen was asked to devise an ethnological department for the Exhibition of Art and Industry in Copenhagen in 1879 he emulated the Dutch example from the arrangement down to the selection of the individual objects.27 To symbolize national characteristics he chose an exhibit which—just like the Dutch before—advanced from a local or regional feature to an epitome of the national simply by being singled out and presented at a major exhibition. In his case it was a room taken from a Dutch enclave28 on the Danish island Amager. Inspired by the exhibit of 1878 Olsen founded the Danish Folk Museum (Danske Folkemuseum) in

26 Cf. de Jong/Skougaard, “The Hindeloopen and the Amager Rooms”, p. 167. 27 He even copied the type of scene depicted, a christening. See ibid., p. 170. 28 In the sixteenth century a small ‘Dutch’ community had settled on the island, whose descendents still held on to many of the original customs even amidst a rapidly changing ‘Danish’ environment in the nineteenth. However, in this case it is problematic to apply the nineteenth-century terms of national identity, since the ‘Dutch’ and the ‘Danish’ on the island to a certain extent shared a common Frisian culture or ancestry. De Jong and Skougaard juxtapose ‘Dutch’—to describe the population of the enclave—and ‘Danish’— to describe the population in the surrounding communities—when referring to Amager. See ibid., p. 167. 110 angela schwarz

Figure 4. Amager room with mannequins, Copenhagen 1879. Taken from Adriaan de Jong, Mette Skougaard, “The Hindeloopen and the Amager Rooms. Two Examples of an Historical Museum Phenomenon”, Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1993, p. 169. Source: Photo Nationalmuseet Copenhagen.

1885, which continued to show the Amager room as the perfect expression of the Danish nation. The ethnographic exhibit, shown at an international exhibition to define a particular nation, thus influenced expositions and museum culture in another country. Eventually it was to prompt the creation of folk and open-air museums first in Scandinavia and then everywhere in Europe.29 To give only one—though notable—example, the first Danish open-air museum founded by Olsen in 1897 spurred on Frederic Hoefer, a Dutch museologist (to use a modern term), who visited Olsen when devis- ing the Dutch open-air museum in Arnhem.30

29 At the turn into the twentieth century rooms filled with mannequins in traditional costume were to become a popular feature of the newly created open-air museums in many countries. Cf. Stoklund, “International Exhibitions and the New Museum Concept”, p. 110. 30 Cf. de Jong/Skougaard, “The Hindeloopen and the Amager Rooms”, p. 168. the regional and the global 111

Conclusions Nineteenth-century great exhibitions assembled the world in one place. They worked as trade shows, information exchanges, meeting places, vanity fairs. The reconstructions of peasant villages they put on show fulfilled various functions on various levels as economic ventures, means of entertainment, of education and national profiling. To do so more effectively, participants kept an eye on their competitors and their methods. This instigated multifarious processes of transnational transfer. Thus, great exhibitions acceler- ated cultural interconnectedness across Europe in a similar way and on a similar scale as they contributed to cross-linking national economies. While nation states stressed their might and modernity at a time when rivalries between them intensified, it became ever more important to them to emphasise what separated them and made a particular one unique. In subsequent processes of creating an identity and inventing a national tradition,31 a national style, attention focused on folk culture—in addition to architecture—as the symbol of the true national character. As part of the national self-image folk culture helped to transform the construct of the nation into something that could be exhibited, grasped with more senses than just the one of seeing and that people would recognise.32 However, organisers of exhibits did not act in isolation from others when they clari- fied what the term folk culture was to stand for and when they explored the methods for how best to present it. Rather the opposite is true, for great exhibitions boosted rapprochement and exchange that seemed an exclusive characteristic of one, even in matters of conceptualising the nation. The activities of Bernhard Olsen point to another aspect of the cultural transfers triggered or promoted by expositions. Features of the fairs were not only transposed from one exposition to another (and from the great fairs to the smaller ones) but also into other fields such as museum culture and leisure culture—and from there back to the expositions again. They all profited from a trend common in the highly industrialised and urbanised countries on the verge of the modern mass age; the (re-)discovery of folk culture. The allegedly stable and harmonious folk culture represented continuity, a means of self-ascertainment for the individual and the nation alike. Knowing that at least some things do not change, preferably the good ones, was a common consolation then—probably just as much as it is now.

31 As Orvar Löfgren aptly points out, this process of “inventing” included much more than simple emulation or transfer from one context to another that leaves the model unchanged. Cf. Löfgren, “The Nationalization of Culture”, p. 12. 32 Cf. Elke Krasny, “Zukunft ohne Ende—das Unternehmen Weltausstellung”, in Bri- gitte Felderer, ed., Wunschmaschine Welterfindung. Eine Geschichte der Technikvisionen seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Wien, New York: Springer, 1996), pp. 332–333.

Ethnographic Display and Political Narrative: The Salle de France of the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro

Daniel DeGroff *

Although it is generally recognised that the nineteenth-century world’s fairs and certain national museums pioneered the display of colonial exotica—in the form of both inanimate objects and people—the inclusion and display of artefacts representative of traditional European folklife in those same exhibition spaces has been less frequently discussed.1 What is the relationship between colonial ethnography and peasant ethnography? How has ethnographic display been enlisted in the service of national identity construction? How is peasant ethnography bound up with the dynamic of cultural transfer engendered by nationalised museum spaces and the international fairs? What, finally, is the relationship between peasant ethnography and political narrative? The present chapter seeks to answer these questions as it examines the inclusion of peasant ethnography within one national museum, the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro.

The Rise of Peasant Ethnography: An European Affair By the end of the nineteenth century, whereas the colonial powers were creating showcases for their foreign collections, countries without a formal empire, most notably Sweden, were mining domestic (and neighbouring) populations for their own ethnographic source material to display to the world. The leading protagonist in this parallel history is Artur Hazelius (1833–1901). Hazelius played a key role in questioning the values, or at least the sources, of ethnographic display in the second half of the nineteenth century. If it was generally accepted among the European powers

* This article is better due to the advice of David Hopkin, Tim Baycroft and Hannah DeGroff, all of whom I thank. 1 On the colonial roots of ethnographic display, see in particular Sylviane Leprun, Le Théâtre des colonies (Paris, 1986); Nicolas Bancel et al. (eds), Zoos humains. XIXe et XXe siè- cles (Paris, 2002), and W.H. Schneider, “Race and Empire: The Rise of Popular Ethnography in the Late Nineteenth Century”, Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1977): 98–109. 114 daniel degroff

Figure 1. French postcard of one of Hazelius’s cottage interiors as exhibited at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878. Image courtesy of the Nordiska Museet, Sweden. that colonial ethnographic display constituted one form of legitimate cultural competition, then Sweden effectively altered the terms of nationalist engagement through the valorisation and display of its own, and, controversially, its Scandinavian neighbours’, ethnographic wealth.2 Hazelius, through the Nordiska Museet (founded in 1873), the Skansen Open-Air Museum (founded in 1891), and particularly the exposure his ethnographic displays received during the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878, influenced how other national communities around Europe imagined and portrayed themselves to publics both domestic and international.3 Employing the arresting visual technologies of the period, including the painted panorama, the diorama and techniques of theatre set-design, Hazelius’s methods were eminently of the time, even if the scenes produced—most often peasant and burgher living spaces from a recon-

2 The Swedish context will be used for comparative purposes throughout the present article. For more on the Swedish context, see Daniel DeGroff, “Artur Hazelius and the Eth- nographic Display of the Scandinavian Peasantry: A Study in Context and Appropriation”, European Review of History/Revue européene d’histoire 19 (Apr. 2012): 229–248. 3 On the role of cultural transfer at the world’s fairs, see Angela Schwarz’s contribution to the present volume. ethnographic display and political narrative 115 structed countryside—provoked a backward-looking nostalgia, a longing for a lost period of moral rectitude and social security (figure 1).4 Canalis- ing nostalgia through the visual technologies of the period, Hazelius constructed a novel way of imagining the national community, and he did so in front of an audience of millions.5 Hazelius and his artisans set a very high standard for ethnographic (or folkloric) display in the three decades before the Great War, expanding the terrain of nationalist competition in the process. Museum spaces influenced by Hazelius’s exhibition methods are numerous, including: the Hindeloopen Room, an interior from the province of Friesland in the Netherlands exhibited by the Dutch at the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition; the Amager Room, a reconstructed interior from the island of Amager installed in the Danske Folkemuseum from 1885; the Breton Gallery of the Musée de Quimper, founded in 1884; the original dioramas of Frédéric Mistral’s Museon Arlaten; and finally, the subject of the present chapter, the Salle de France, a series of exhibition spaces curated by Armand Landrin dedicated to the French provinces and founded within the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1884.6 The legacy of Swed- ish participation in the 1878 Universal Exposition supports Anne-Marie

4 Nils-Arvid Bringéus, “Artur Hazelius and the Nordic Museum”, Ethnologia Scandi- navica (1974): 5–16. 5 The world exhibitions, ever popular, began with approximately 6 million attendees in London in 1851 before reaching its zenith at the end of the century with 50 million visitors to the Paris International Exposition of 1900. 6 See Adriaan de Jong and Mette Skougaard, “The Hindeloopen and the Amager Rooms: Two Examples of an Historical Museum Phenomenon”, Journal of the History of Collections 5 (1993): 165–78; and Marc Maure, “Nation, paysan et musée, la naissance des musées d’ethnographie dans les pays scandinaves (1870–1904)”, Terrain 20 (1993): 147–57. Hazelius’s methods of display generated a great deal of interest among the anthropological community in France. Jules Henri Kramer, Hazelius’s Swiss publicist, recorded that the French Anthropological Congress, meeting during or shortly after the close of the Universal Exposition of 1878, was “seized” by the idea of creating “a museum following the model of the interesting and popular section of Scandinavian ethnography exhibited at the Trocadéro Palace.” See Jules Henri Kramer, Le Musée d’Ethnographie Scandinave à Stockholm, fondé et dirigé par le Dr Arthur Hazelius (Stockholm, 1879), p. 39. On the Breton Gallery of the Musée de Quimper, see Quimper, trois siècles de faïence (Quimper, 1990); and Armand Landrin, “Les Musées d’ethnographie. L’ethnographie française. 1—Musées départementaux. 2—Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro”, Revue des traditions populaires 3/5 (May 1888): 241–46. On the Museon Arlaten, see Anne Dymond’s contribution to the present volume; and Dominique Séréna-Allier, “Mistral et ‘la renaissance de la Provence’: l’invention du Museon Arlaten”, La pensée de midi 1 (2000): 32–39. The French folklorist Paul Sébillot, in an article appearing in Le Breton de Paris (8 January 1911), mentioned the pioneer-status of Hazelius in the field of ethnographic display. 116 daniel degroff

Thiesse’s argument that “[n]othing is more international than the formation of national identities.”7

The Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro: A Brief History On 18 October 1878, approximately one month before the close of the universal exposition of that same year, the French Chamber of Deputies voted to establish the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro (MET).8 The MET had a major precursor in the Muséum ethnographique des missions scientifiques created a few years earlier following the instigation of Oscar de Watteville, the then Director of Science and Letters within the Ministry of Public Instruction. The Muséum ethnographique des missions scientifiques was directly implicated in the French imperial project in that it functioned as a showcase for ethnographic objects acquired during scientific and exploratory missions. The Muséum had pedagogic and promotional functions as well, an agenda later adopted by the MET. As Nélia Dias writes, the Muséum prefigured the MET in several aspects: through a “concern with rigorous presentation”, “documentary support in the guise of maps, plans and stamps”, and a “pedagogical vocation realized through conferences and guided visits, not to mention the obvious patriotic dimension of the œuvre of explorers.”9 Looking ahead to future dis- cussions concerning the representations of the French peasantry within the MET, we note here an initial source of potential conflict: the presence of symbols of French provincial life within a museum explicitly dedicated to the patriotic exploration of foreign lands. Between 23 January and 28 February 1878, there was a temporary exhibit of the Muséum ethnographique des missions scientifiques in the Palais de l’Industrie, situated just off the Champs-Elysées. The exposition included objects brought back from voyages to Russia, central Asia, Syria, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Africa, Cambodia, Japan, China and elsewhere by intrepid imperial entrepreneurs, and also, significantly,

7 Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales (Paris, 1999), p. 11. 8 On the founding of the MET, see Nélia Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, 1878–1908 (Paris, 1991); and E.T. Hamy, Les Origines du Musée d’Ethnographie, intro. Nélia Dias (Paris, 1988 [1890]). 9 Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, pp. 163, 166. See also N. Dias, “The Vis- ibility of Difference: Nineteenth-Century French Anthropological Collections”, in Sha- ron Macdonald (ed.), The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (New York, 1998), pp. 36–52; and Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (eds), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture, and the Museum (London, 1998). ethnographic display and political narrative 117

Figure 2. The Oceania display at the MET. © Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. Image distributed by Réunion des musées nationaux. by art collectors.10 “If the desire to make a scientific exhibit outweighed practical considerations”, writes Dias of this early colonial-style exhibition, “the fact remains that its organizers had to yield to the demands of the public.” Objects were accordingly situated in a way that would be both “picturesque and arresting” for the visitors. The methods of display included wall panoplies, mannequins in costume, photographs, maps and plaster casts, and various artefacts and objets d’art. This temporary exhibit was later transferred to the Champs de Mars, where it attracted visitors to the Universal Exposition of 1878, which ran from 1 May to 10 Novem- ber. If the audience for the Muséum ethnographique des missions scientifiques was largely domestic in the run up to the start of the Universal Exposition, the reach of this kind of ethnographic display would become

10 Henri Cernuschi, asian art collector and founder of the eponymous Parisian museum, first presented his collections at the Palais de l’Industrie in 1873. Ting Chang, “Collecting Asia: Théodore Duret’s Voyage en Asie and Henri Cernuschi’s Museum”, Oxford Art Journal 25 (2002): 17–34. 118 daniel degroff increasingly international as the Universal Exposition of 1878 and the museum it engendered, the MET, began to assume the mission of popularising the progress of European colonial expansion—even as it catered to the aesthetic tastes of the French bourgeoisie (figure 2).11 The MET proved to be very popular with the Parisian public, as Jacques Bertillon recorded in 1882 in the journal La Nature a few years after the museum’s opening: The opening of this museum was a real event in Paris. The official and unaffiliated learned societies, notably the Anthropological Society and the Geographical Society, visited [the museum] with deserving care. But what is more remarkable still: it is not only the scientists who were interested but also the great Parisian public, who attended the event with unexpected eagerness and who flock to the museum every Sunday. Bertillon went on to suggest that the success of the MET was due to the “increasing interest of the French public in the anthropological sciences”, describing ethnography as “surely the most picturesque of these sciences” because of its ability “to pique the curiosity” of the general public.12 The desire by the museum authorities to reach a popular audience is attested by the fact that the MET was open on Sundays and public holidays, traditional days for the exercise of bourgeois sociability (figure 3).13 If the great international expositions of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries functioned as sites of international competition, then the same could be said for their offshoot institutions, whether the MET in Paris or the South Kensington Museum in London, popular museums which in many regards carried on the propaganda functions of the international exhibitions.14 The richness of the collections on display in the

11 On the popular appeal of the French empire, see W.H. Schneider, An Empire for the Masses: The French Popular Image of Africa, 1870–1900 (Westport, CT, 1982). On the connections between scientific knowledge and colonialism, see Daniel J. Sherman, “ ‘Peoples Ethnographic’: Objects, Museums, and the Colonial Inheritance of French Ethnography”, French Historical Studies 27 (2004): 669–703. On the ideology of French imperialism in the Third Republic, see Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, 1997). 12 Cited in Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, p. 195. 13 Museum-going in France has been seen as an occupational accoutrement of the upper-bourgeoisie, as a prescribed rite of the social elite. See Pierre Bourdieu’s The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (Cambridge, 1996 [1989]), and Distinction: A Social Critique of Taste (London, 1984 [1979]). The broad, undifferentiated social appeal of the world’s fairs and the museums which followed in their wake would seem however to complicate Bourdieu’s class-based criticism of “the aristocracy of culture”. 14 The South Kensington Museum was an outgrowth of the Great Exhibition of 1851, as the MET was an outgrowth of the 1878 exposition. The South Kensington Museum was later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum. For more on the importance of the South ethnographic display and political narrative 119 halls and cabinets of the new French ethnographic museum, for example, proclaimed France’s global reach in an age of imperialism as well as the French anthropological community’s expertise in recreating foreign bodies and settings. The MET communicated to France’s rivals, particularly Britain, that France was a legitimate guardian of the world’s cultural heritage. But in order to project the image of benign cultural guardianship it was first necessary to procure the coveted objects in question, a concern voiced by Armand Landrin, the co-curator of the MET (the head curator was E.T. Hamy), in 1878, six years before he became the chief curator of the Salle de France: The exposition [of 1878] will bring ethnographic riches of inestimable value to Paris and we should keep them here. To do so, it is necessary that these objects are located without wasting time, and that someone should serve as intermediary with the relevant foreign delegates so as to facilitate exchanges and gifts. Already the South Kensington [Museum] has designated someone, it would appear, to locate objects of interest during unpacking in order to prepare for their acquisition. The foreign ethnographic museums are going to do likewise; must we not prepare ourselves to fight against this competition?15 France had of course long held an interest in cultures ancient and foreign. Recall, for example, the army of savants that accompanied Napoleon during his Egyptian campaigns. The primary difference of course between the Napoleonic era and the latter half of the nineteenth century was the presence of the great international fairs, forums which, like the flagship state museums created in their wake, allowed the leading European countries to parade their exotic acquisitions before the covetous eyes of other nations, drawing cultural battle lines in the act. The new exhibition spaces, through the assignation of nationalist value to ethnographic display, effectively commoditised the constituent exotic objects: African masks, primitive costumes and lodgings, tools, and indeed people were all fodder for this sort of exhibition—when such objects did not enter the art market and find a private buyer. The objects in question became valuable not because of their worth sui generis but rather for their capacity to reflect the global status and worldly tastes of the possessor-nation.

Kensington Museum as a cultural institution conceived to cultivate and enlighten an “undifferentiated public”, i.e. the public of the great international fairs, see Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex”, in Nicholas B. Dirks et al. (eds), Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social History (Princeton, NJ, 1994), pp. 123–54. 15 Letter dated 1878 from Armand Landrin to the Ministry of Public Instruction as cited in Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, p. 167. 120 daniel degroff

Figure 3. The Palais du Trocadéro (later replaced by the Palais de Chaillot). The Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro was installed in the west wing.

The Salle de France: Peasants on Display within the MET In a letter dated 16 April 1884 and addressed to the office of the Minis- try of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, Armand Landrin announced the creation of a new exhibition space within the museum: “At the occasion of the Congress of Learned Societies, the Musée d’ethnographie du Troca- déro is opening a new room dedicated to the ethnography of Europe and especially to the provinces of France.”16 The inauguration ceremony for the new exhibit, which came to be known as the Salle de France, occurred two days later. In a subsequent letter to the directors of the museum Lan- drin proudly mentioned that the new exhibition space had welcomed approximately 10,000 visitors, thereby proving its popularity with the Parisian public.17

16 Archives nationales de France (AnF), F17 3846/2/6/120. 17 AnF, F17 3846/2/6/121. The new exhibition space was between 130 and 200 square meters. On the Salle de France, see Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, p. 189; and Marie-France Noël, “Du musée ethnographique du Trocadéro au musée national des A.T.P.”, in Jean Cuisenier (ed.) Muséologie et ethnologie (Paris, 1987), pp. 140–51. What little we know about the figure of Armand Landrin comes from an unpublished Master’s thesis by Marie-Eve Bouillon, a copy of which can be found in the now defunct Musée des arts ethnographic display and political narrative 121

Hazelius’s decision to construct and exhibit stylised depictions of Scan- dinavian rural life, first in Stockholm in 1873, and later in Paris in 1878, was prompted by a set of values characteristic of a particular historical conjuncture where anxiety concerning the consequences of industrialisation intersected with the ideological impulse of nationalism. If French museum authorities engaged in a similar type of display in the Salle de France, their reasons for doing so were different. Whereas folk tradition, simple virtues, and even poverty were cast as Swedish national values in Hazelius’s exhibition spaces, the display of French peasants in the Salle de France was inscribed within another discourse. Indeed the two projects, although seeming to end in the creation of superficially similar representations of unspoilt (or archaic) rural existence, were in fact mutually antagonistic. Rather than an homage to peasant virtue, the Salle de France was informed by the cult of progress so characteristic of the early Third Republic as well as by the evolutionary claims of anthropological science. In a set of instructions addressed to prospective ethnographers within the French hexagon (in other words to those individuals who could help augment the collections of the Salle de France), Landrin defined the purpose of ethnography to be “the study of the mores and customs of various peoples in order to determine their line of descent [ filiation], character, origin, migrations, social state, and degree of civilisation.” As such, the Salle de France, he insisted, was not to be a showcase for “pure art”, i.e., those objects that had, following the march of civilisation, “arrived at an elevated degree of perfection”—these objects were housed in the Louvre and the other fine arts museums.18 The exhibition space was rather meant to house “documents of popular origin relating to ancient practices perpetuated by tradition.” Following their collection,

et traditions populaires in the Bois de Boulogne. It would seem that Landrin had at least two lives, one dedicated to science, the other as a Republican propagandist. Bouillon notes that Landrin, before taking the post at the MET, was a naturalist at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, where he presumably worked alongside E.T. Hamy. In addition to an occupation as a naturalist, he also practiced journalism, having associations with several Republican newspapers including L’Avenir national, Le National, La Correspondance républicaine and Le Siècle. See Claude Bellanger et al., Histoire générale de la presse française (Paris, 1972), p. 206; and Marie-Eve Bouillon, “Présence et usage de la photographie pour l’ethnographie française entre 1878 et 1900 à travers la collection photographique de la Salle de France du musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro.” Maîtrise d’Histoire de l’Art. Université de Paris I (2000–2001). 18 On the tendency of the French ruling class’s interest in fine art to marginalise the cultural forms of regional France, see Anne Dymond’s contribution to the present volume. 122 daniel degroff these objects of popular origin, he specified, should be separated and classed according to certain key attributes. Their classification should follow a certain logic: “firstly those which allow for the physical study of individual humans; then those of which the invention is due to the instinct of conservation (weapons, food, habitation, clothing); [then] those related to intellectual aspiration and conceptions (cults and superstitions, medicine and other sciences, arts); finally, those that are related to social relationships (industry, commerce, social life).” Landrin significantly refused to make any distinction between the acts of collecting ethnographic data at home versus abroad. The conceptual dichotomy was expressed in cultural rather than geographical terms. “In a word, we have established general categories that could apply as well to the ethnographic collection of a peuple sauvage as to that of a peuple civilisé.”19 Unlike the ethnographic (or folkloric) display being undertaken in other parts of Europe during the same period, there is no sense that the objects of “popular art and tradition” collected by the MET were symbolic of national values, or that they represented the historic core of a certain vision of national identity, a point to which we shall return in the final section. One of the earliest recorded descriptions of the peasant displays of the Salle de France appeared in the journal La Nature. Curiously the description, an article of a few pages, follows a piece concerned with the development of the electric telegraph and precedes another purporting to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies through the laws of electro-dynamics. This stark alteration of subjects, where two articles promoting technological transformation and scientific mastery are separated by another addressing the mise-en-scène of rural archaism, arguably corresponded to a certain logic of French modernity. Indeed as time, technology and industry marched forward in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, it was deemed useful to construct a primitive foil by which to measure the sense of cultural progress. In the Swedish case, one could argue that the effort undertaken by Hazelius, whatever its relationship to the vague question of nostalgia, served an ideological function: it spoke to some of the primary values of Swedish nationalism and sought to legitimise Swe- den’s claim to be the cultural guardian of Scandinavian heritage. It was

19 Armand Landrin, “Instructions sommaires relatives aux collections ethnographiques à recueillir dans les pays civilisés et essai de classification”, Matériaux pour l’histoire et naturelle de l’homme 5/3 (January 1888), pp. 250–59. ethnographic display and political narrative 123 legitimised by dominant strains in Swedish history celebrating the role of the peasantry in political and religious history.20 In France, the mise- en-scène of archaism also served ideological purposes—but altogether different ones. Cultural institutions such as the MET and the universal expositions were used to proclaim the progressive modernity of France, something achieved at the expense of the image of an historic French peasantry. Scenes of stasis (immobilisme), misery and crudeness drawn from regional and colonial settings were used to amplify the uniquely French signs of progress, modernity and sophistication. The article in La Nature (which includes four illustrations of the displays) advertised the recent inauguration of the Salle de France, describing the space as having some “very curious collections of ancient costumes and popular utensils from France.” The effort, spearheaded by Landrin, included nearly two thousand objects collected, catalogued and classed by province.21 The items in their ensemble were not intended to reflect the deep and abiding affinity between the modern Frenchman and an historic peasantry but were rather meant to serve as a negative marker of progress. The emphasis was placed not upon the imagined virtues of rural life, which were far from obvious, but rather on the primitive nature of “prehistoric” communities successfully brought into history under the supervision of French civilisation. The displays themselves would have provoked a range of responses ranging from amusement to pity to revul- sion but there is no reason to believe that the displays provoked any sense of sympathy or admiration, as in the Swedish case. The ugly waxen figures were intended to be received as foreign in a museum specialising in the exhibition of things foreign. In addition to several interior scenes, the Salle de France included at least two solitary models: a figure representing a peasant from the Landes” (figure 4) as well as another of a guardian from the Camargue, complete with stuffed horse. (This sort of display, in which a single specimen is placed against a white backdrop, recalls the genre of display pioneered in Colonel Le Clerc’s ethnographic gallery).22 The figures were taken to represent the

20 Øystein Sørensen (ed.), Nordic Paths to National Identity in the Nineteenth Century (Oslo, 1994). 21 Fernand Landrin, “Anciens costumes populaires français au Palais du Trocadéro”, La Nature. Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie 17 (1889): 295. 22 Gilles Aubagnac, “En 1878 les « sauvages » entrent au musée de l’Armée”, in Nicolas Bancel et al. (eds), Zoos humains. XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris, 2002), p. 351. See also Duhous- set (Colonel), “Galerie ethnographique du musée d’artillerie”, L’Illustration, 23 Mars 1878 124 daniel degroff

Figure 4. Peasant from the Landes region. © Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. Image distributed by Réunion des musées nationaux. ethnographic display and political narrative 125 essence of racial type, a physical essence often complimented by distinctive attire, frequently including primitive weaponry. In the online image database where the photos of the Salle de France are archived, the two solitary figures have been titled for the benefit of researchers (“peasant from the Landes” for example), but the displays themselves, as seen in the photographs, were not obviously labelled.23 Thus the installations were not intended to reflect the enduring characteristics of any particular regional identity; the scenes were rather equated with a generic vision of a French primitiveness being effaced by the progressive forces of modernity, the same linear narrative often applying to the colonial displays within the MET. Indeed much was made of the fact that the artefacts, along with the ancient costumes covering the strange-looking mannequins, were no longer in use but rather remnants of a rural way of life in its twilight. There is very little nostalgia here. It is not without difficulty that we were able to collect these objects, out of use now for the most part, having been replaced by newly perfected and patented instruments. They are rare, the peasants who have kept the costumes of their fathers instead of wearing the horrible blouse. So it was necessary to run around the most remote villages questioning and searching for obsolete utensils, all the old things gathering in corners and buried under the dust; and it is only little by little that we were able to complete these series.24 In addition to solitary figures, the museum visitor also encountered ethnographic dioramas of the kind popularised by Artur Hazelius. In contrast to the Swedish productions however, the French provincial scenes pursued neither stylised authenticity nor even legibility. The Breton display (figure 5), the most striking of the French section, was an amalgamation of different “types” found in the west of France rather than a studied, sympathetic, and narrative-driven scene taken from provincial family life.25

(p. 187) and 6 April 1878 (pp. 219–226); and Galerie ethnographique. Musée de l’Artillerie (Paris, 1877). 23 Due to constraints I am able to include only two of the photographs of the Salle de France. For those seeking a fuller appreciation of the collection see “Le musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro: les albums de la section française (19e siècle)” at: « www.culture.gouv. fr/documentation/phocem/albums.htm ». Base PhoCEM, the image database of the Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM), contains several images of the Salle de France, including an interior scene peopled with Provençal peasants, the aforementioned gardian camarguais, a Burgundian interior scene, as well as a simple display of “two men from Pontgibaud”. 24 Fernand Landrin, “Anciens costumes populaires français au Palais du Trocadéro”, p. 295. 25 Perhaps the most famous scene of Hazelius’s dioramas is the The Little Girl’s Death- bed (Lillan’s sista badd) set in the Scanian provinces. 126 daniel degroff

Figure 5. Interior scene: mannequins in Breton costume. © Musée des Civilisa- tions de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. Image distributed by Réunion des musées nationaux.

The one constant would seem to be the inclusion of furniture (particularly the recognisable box bed), clothing and wall-hangings, but no claims were made regarding the beauty of traditional forms or the quality of provincial craftsmanship.26 The heads of the eight mannequins, like the rest of the heads in the museum, were modelled “after nature” by a Monsieur Hébert, described as the “adroit director of the museum’s studios.”27 Whereas people frequently commented positively upon the craftsmanship and style of those objects taken from the Scandinavian countryside, the author of the article in La Nature slipped easily into a register of condescension characteristic of the bemused observer. Adjectives like “bizarre”, “savage”, “primitive”, “curious”, “charming”, and “strange” char- acterise the encounter; indeed the very nature of the displays anticipated such engagement. In Landrin’s description of the various scenes, we are introduced to a “Bressan woman wearing her bizarre hat”, “a Bigoudan servant girl wearing her curious little bonnet and her savage costume all covered with yellow silk embroidery.” (Yellow silk embroidery does not

26 The idea of rural France as a valued preserve of traditional modes of production is a theme that would be propagated from 1937. See Shanny Peer’s France on Display: Peasants, Provincials and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair (New York, 1998). 27 Armand Landrin, “Les Musées d’ethnographie. L’ethnographie française. 1—Musées départementaux. 2—Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro”, Revue des traditions populaires 3/5 (May 1888): 244. ethnographic display and political narrative 127 usually connote savagery!) The tools of the Franche-Comté lapidary are described as the “most primitive”, the region of Ariège as “one of the most miserable countries.” “We cannot cite everything”, the article concludes: Each province has contributed its quota to this remarkable collection where almost everything deserves consideration. We will only point out, however, some curious tools used for peeling originating in the forests of the Ardennes, Sologne, Vosges, etc . . . forms made of a horse’s tibia, bevelled, the head of which is embedded with a blade of flint or iron. Seeing these strange tools, one would think that they were just found in a lakeside hovel or a prehistoric tomb, and that certainly they have been kept unchanged since the earliest ages to the present.28 There is no mistaking the cultural value assigned to the category “prehistoric” in a journal like La Nature dedicated to the exploits of science and technology. The article, unlike descriptions of Hazelius’s Nordiska Museet, was not admiring but condescending. If romantic nationalism served in the Swedish case to cast rural folkways in an appealing light, the discourse of cosmopolitan supremacy had the opposite effect for French regional culture. Indeed there is very little romantic appeal in the archaic bits and bobs of “miserable”, “savage” Ariège, save their ability to excite a certain curiosity about how France’s onetime but always culturally marginal populations once lived. Hazelius recognised the public’s desire to be transported by technologies of illusion and he hired assistants, whether stage designers, artists or anatomists, who could help achieve the desired effect. As a result, Haze- lius turned his ethnographic work into art. The curators of the Salle de France did not hire stage-designers or renowned landscape artists; their conception of France’s ethnographic truth was rather more bleak and monochrome. The design of the Breton interior was not a studied reconstruction of an emotive scene of domestic life but rather a hodgepodge of “types” placed within a similarly confusing composite interior: “a little girl from Concarneau” was placed next to peasants from Bourg-de-Batz, Plougastel-Daoulas, and Kerfenten; a “bagpipe (biniou) player from Pont- l’Abbé” rubbed shoulders with a “young fiancée in a red Quimperois costume”, all this inside an interior that, as Paul Sébillot, a leading folklorist of the period, commented, was itself “a reconstitution, not of an ordinary Breton house, but of objects that are found in several houses” from around Brittany.29 The desire then was not to produce a touching impression,

28 Landrin, “Anciens costumes populaires français au Palais du Trocadéro”, p. 298. 29 Ibid. For the quotation by Sébillot, see Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, p. 188. 128 daniel degroff or to provoke patriotic sentiment in the manner that Hazelius intended through his more harmoniously crafted displays. On the contrary, the Breton interior promoted confusion in the mind of the attentive viewer, for he was not presented with a clear narrative in praise of peasant morality or craftsmanship but rather barraged with a largely inchoate mélange of “types”. If French museum authorities attempted to follow the example set by Hazelius in the creation of their own dioramas, their efforts were complicated by the conceptual categories and methods of anthropological science. The article in La Nature noted that the mannequins were modelled “after nature” and that, as such, they gave “an exact idea of the type of the region.”30 The use of the word “type” in this regard refers to physical type, particularly cranial shape. Dominated by the figure of Paul Broca, anthropology in this period depended heavily upon the positive accumu- lation of cranial and other corporal measurements as part of an effort to distinguish the various “human families” of the Earth.31 “In some ways this interest was a carryover from the Enlightenment’s interest in the study of man”, writes W.H. Schneider, “but for a variety of reasons French anthropology was sidetracked into a study of physical traits, i.e., physical anthropology rather than social or cultural ethnography.”32 The human families of the Earth were not limited of course to the French hexagon. Indeed the French collections within the MET were dwarfed by artefacts of non-European provenance. The MET, it should be remembered, was intended primarily to serve as a showcase for objects brought back from foreign expeditions. As described in 1886 the museum contained objects from, among elsewhere, Oceania, Mexico (particularly the Yucatan peninsula), and South America.33 The point is that there were few if any fundamental differences between how the domestic and foreign primitives were regarded under the light of the MET; both were inscribed in what Dias defines as the “problématique évolutionniste”, a paradigm

30 Landrin, “Anciens costumes populaires français au Palais du Trocadéro”, p. 295. 31 See Armand de Quatrefages and E.-T. Hamy, Crania ethnica: Les crânes des races humaines, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882). Hamy was the chief curator of the MET. He and Quatrefages were practitioners of Brocean anthropology. For background, see Donald Bender, “The Development of French Anthropology”, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1 (1965): 139–51. 32 Schneider, An Empire for the Masses, p. 20. 33 E.O. Lami, “Musée du Trocadéro”, in Dictionnaire encyclopédique et biographique des arts industriels 6 (Paris, 1886), pp. 725–27. ethnographic display and political narrative 129 that found both lacking in the face of a French rational, cosmopolitan modernity.34 The 1886 article in La Nature is revealing in that it did not make a distinction between France’s internal savages and the Redskin. The Breton woman and the Amazonian tribeswoman were sister savages within the MET. How much we like better [than the mummies mentioned elsewhere in the article] these coloured wax casts representing different savage types from the banks of the Amazon going to a party with a necklace for every outfit, these Oceanic warriors, the other Indian woman resembling a general of the Republic, this superb Redskin . . . and in a large well-lit room, some Breton women in an interior of natural grandeur, strikingly accurate. Everything is there: pots, the carved cabinet beds, and the old grandfather, always frozen, sitting by the hearth. The decor, very well done, has a gift for attracting the crowd.35 This description of the Breton display recalls Balzac’s Les Paysans (1844), where Blondel considers a peasant’s form: I wonder what the ideas and manner of life of such a human being may be! What is he thinking about? Blondel asked himself . . . Is that my fellow man? We have only our human shape in common, and yet. He looked at the hard tissues peculiar to those who lead an out-of-door life, accustomed to all weathers, and to excessive heat and cold, and to hardships, in fact, of every kind, a training which turns the skin to something like tanned leather, and makes the sinews almost pain-proof, like those of the Arabs or Cossacks. That is one of Fenimore Cooper’s Redskins, said Blondel to himself. There is no need to go to America to study the savage.36 Indeed one did not even have to leave Paris.

The Failure of Landrin’s Musée des provinces de la France Suffering from chronic funding shortages the Salle de France was closed around 1930 by Georges Rivet and Georges-Henri Rivière, the representatives of the next wave of ethnographic display in France. According to Isabelle Collet, the “failure” of the Salle de France, the fact that it was “abandoned to the dust” and suffered from regular budget cuts is reflective

34 Dias, Le Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro, p. 166. 35 Lami, “Musée du Trocadéro”, p. 727. 36 Honoré de Balzac, Les Paysans (Paris, 1970 [1844]), p. 84. 130 daniel degroff of “the lack of interest on the part of the state for this type of museum.”37 This “lack of interest”, or at least the problematic nature of the undertaking, is everywhere evident to the researcher interested in the question of the (aborted) development of a French national ethnography. A proposal for a national ethnographic museum that mirrors in some respects the smaller Salle de France is found in the archives of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle bearing the signature of Landrin.38 A brief consideration of Landrin’s ultimately unrealised proposal will be used to shed some further light on the cultural function of the more modestly conceived Salle de France discussed above. We will then segue into a closing section discussing some of difficulties inherent in the construction of a French national ethnography based on rural or provincial imagery. Bearing the date 1889 and addressed to the municipal council of Paris, the proposal records Landrin’s vision, the creation of what he tentatively called the Musée des provinces de la France or the Musée national de la France. I have the honour to propose to you the creation of a Musée national de la France, in which would be presented in a form at the same time picturesque and informative the objects essential to an appreciation of the geography, costumes, manners, various productions, monuments, and natural beauty of all the regions of your territory. So far there is not a similar museum. It belongs to the Paris Municipal Council, which represents the interest and high aspirations of the people of Paris, to found this national work, to raise this monument to the French nation in the great city that presides over its destiny. The museum was to be placed within the Palais des arts libéraux, which at this time was situated on the Champs de Mars. In an effort to sway the Parisian authorities to accept his proposal he smartly insisted that a large part of the Palais des arts would be dedicated to the Paris region, with the rest of the space taking the name the Musée des provinces de la France.

37 For the exact closure date, it is a question of choosing your source: Martine Segalen, La Vie d’un Musée, 1937–2005 (Paris, 2005), p. 19; or Nina Gorgus, Le magician des vitrines: Le muséologue Georges Henri Rivière (Paris, 2003), p. 69. See also Isabelle Collet, “Le Monde rural aux expositions universelles de 1900 et 1937”, in J. Cuisenier (ed.), Muséologie et ethnologie (Paris, 1987), p. 105. 38 2 AM 1 G1a, Exposition universelle de 1878; projet d’un Musée des Provinces de France, in the Archives of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Jardin des Plantes, Paris. See also Jean Jamin, “Armand Landrin, projét de musée des provinces de France”, Gradhiva 3 (1987): 40–43. ethnographic display and political narrative 131

Recalling the influence of Hazelius, as well as the popularity of the Salle de France (founded earlier in 1884), Landrin informed the municipal council that the part of the museum which would be the largest but also the most costly would be the display of 200 mannequins, which would cost approximately 30,000 francs with a similar amount being needed to cover the cost of costumes and accessories. Finally, the mise-en-scène of the 33 groups of mannequins, the design of which is not detailed, would cost around 40,000 francs. But for a rather modest total cost, Landrin concludes, “the city of Paris would be the owner of a museum of indisputable value and interest.” Having seen such things the visitor would leave with a “deeper appreciation of the fatherland.”39 Unfortunately the archives do not give an idea as to why Landrin’s proposal was not accepted. It would seem that the municipal council of Paris did not see the value of portraying the anachronisms of rural life in the wake of an international celebration commemorating the anniversary of the Revolution of 1789 and the invention of electricity.

The Crux of the Matter: Where Ethnographic Display Meets Political Narrative Why was the Salle de France closed in a state of disrepair? Why was Lan- drin’s project for a Musée des provinces de la France never realised? Why, unlike Sweden, was France unable to construct a unifying national, peasant-based ethnography in the last three decades of the nineteenth century? Many Republican elites during the early Third Republic were suspicious of the role of the peasantry in the unfolding narrative of French political modernity. Such suspicions, complementing the mostly derogatory discourse of anthropological science vis-à-vis France’s geographical and cultural periphery, inevitably influenced the ethnographic displays of French provincial life found in the capital. The bourgeois taste for ‘fine art’ further undermined any effort to valorise the symbols of rural France. “Rural majority, shame of France!”, the French jurist Gaston Crémieux famously retorted following the royalist landslide in the parliamentary elections of February 1871—just one month after the proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. Taking place in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, the monarchical victory was carried on the back of rural votes, an event recalling Louis Napoleon’s dubious path to emperorship through national plebiscite in 1852. Similarly Gambetta—

39 Kramer, Le Musée d’Ethnographie Scandinave à Stockholm, p. 23. 132 daniel degroff the firebrand famous for his advertisement of the “new social stratum” of small business owners, pharmacists, lawyers and journalists that in his view represented the future of French Republicanism—was dismissive of the millions of French smallholders populating the countryside, describing them simply as “intellectuellement en retard.”40 The animus communicated by these two Republican luminaries reflected certain abiding conceptions of a rural France seen as vacillating and refractory, as an untrustworthy electorate attracted in turn by the seductive whisperings of nobles, clericals and illiberal Bonapartists. French rural populations, then, have been seen to embody suspect political values—at least in the eyes of many Republicans.41 Such a claim may be easily demonstrated through recourse to the well-trodden terrain of political and journalistic proclamation but for present purposes we are interested in the scarcer, more recondite source material of the cultural historian, who locates politics outside parliament and beyond the stump speech. The symbols of French provincial culture first appeared in very modest form at the Universal Exposition of 1867. The most remarked upon display was the Breton ethnographic scene consisting of mannequins attired in supposedly traditional dress from various parts of the Armorican peninsula. The display provoked much criticism because the elegant, theatre- style costumes, including silk and other “rich tissues”, did not recall in the minds of the visitors the “rustic countryside of Brittany”, much less the “wild inhabitants of that old monarchical land.”42 The visitors’ complaints reflected longstanding stereotypes attached to a provincial identity historically seen to be at odds with the values and thought-styles

40 Cited in Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchman (Stanford, 1976), 19. As late as 1931 there were 7.5 million Frenchmen working as agriculteurs. 41 In the early Third Republic the theme of regional difference—or rather variation— was valorised by Republican commentators almost exclusively through the lens of geography: the natural environment of France was presented in all its wonderful diversity but with regional populations and their suspect politics carefully removed. If Pierre Foncin and Vidal de la Blache presented France as balanced and harmonious, the same could not be said for the politics of regional France, which were every bit as fractious and rancor- ous as in the capital. See Eugen Weber, “In Search of the Hexagon”, in My France: Politics, Culture, Myth (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 57–71. 42 Ernest Dréole, charged with the installation of the ethnographic displays in 1867, defended the manner in which the exposition authorities chose to present the Breton population, denying that the costumes had come from the Opéra-Comique instead of the tailors of Quimper and Brest. See Ducuing, L’Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée (Paris, 1867), pp. 389–91. For more on the French ethnographic displays of 1867, see Collet, “Les premiers musées d’ethnographie régionales, en France”, in Jean Cuisenier (ed.), Muséologie et ethnologie (Paris, 1987), p. 73. ethnographic display and political narrative 133 of the post-Revolutionary order, stereotypes that would be regularly res- urrected during the early Third Republic—and indeed later. As Bjarne Stoklund has compellingly argued, the creation of a national ethnography requires the presentation of “specifically national areas”; thus national ethnographers must privilege certain flagship regions considered to be particularly representative of a given national identity. International audiences have accordingly been introduced, often through the vehicles of the great fairs and national museum spaces, to the mythical sources of the national character: Dalarna in Sweden, Telemark in Norway, or Tyrol in Austria, just to mention a few such examples.43 A similar attempt was undertaken by French cultural authorities in 1867 with the Breton ethnographic display—an effort problematically repeated in the Salle de France—but the display generated more dissension than unity as its sweetened portrayal of the Breton peasantry failed to recall the engrained image of a political community described sometimes romantically, sometimes disdainfully, as committed defenders of the ancien régime, as a savage population stub- bornly faithful to the social authority of the local clerico-aristocratic elite.44 Sharif Gemie talks of the “clumsy amalgam” of anti-Republican images through which the French public interpreted post-Revolutionary Brittany. As Gemie suggests, the western peninsula became the mythical haunt of “monarchist aristocrats, Counter-Revolutionary conspirators, rebellious clerics, rioting peasants, blood-thirsty brigands and cultural illiterates.”45 It is therefore unsurprising that the ethnographic palimpsest of the Breton peasantry proved controversial and divisive in 1867. The contested nature of the symbols of the French countryside was evident well into the early decades of the Third Republic—as the history of the Salle de France attests. Indeed the three decades leading up to the First World War witnessed a town-versus-country proxy war over the place of religious institutions in the life of the nation, a conflict seen by many as

43 Bjarne Stoklund, “The Role of the International Exhibitions in the Construction of National Cultures in the 19th Century”, Ethnologia Europaea 24 (1994): 35–44. 44 The Breton display of 1867, when compared to the more austere display of the Salle de France (from 1884), represents an altogether more positive take on the Armorican population. The difference may be attributed to an attempt on the part of the Bonapar- tist regime to compete with the ethnographic displays of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which presented picturesque displays and paintings of its ethnographic richness in 1867. See Ducuing, L’Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée (Paris, 1867), pp. 23, 325–30. 45 Sharif Gemie, Brittany, 1750–1950: The Invisible Nation (Cardiff, 2007), p. 108. On the changing evaluations of a Breton rural population, see Catherine Bertho, “L’Invention de la Bretagne. Genèse social d’un stéréotype”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 35 (1980): 45–62. 134 daniel degroff culminating in the Separation Law of 1905, which, nullifying the Napole- onic Concordat, drove a lasting wedge between Church and State. In that same year, however, the Pellerin family firm published an image d’Épinal— a market-driven collection of images and other forms of ephemera sold by travelling hawkers—in which appeared “Jusqu’à la mort!”, a broadside recounting an episode from the Vendean wars in which a Catholic chouan in breeches and vest fights Republican soldiers to the death in the grounds of a parish church, indeed atop a piece of religious architecture local to the region (calvaire).46 This popular image was one of many exaggerated retellings of the ongoing conflict between Church and State in Brittany, a conflict fought primarily in rural communes. Referencing the archive of the popular images d’Épinal in an article dealing with other, arguably more serious, science-informed examples of ethnographic display—such as those found in the MET—may raise objections. I would argue, however, that popular conceptions of political identity crystallised in words like “chouan”, “reactionary”, and “Catholic” were brought to mind by ethno- graphically sensitive renderings of the Breton peasantry, and this whether the representation in question was the image d’Épinal, the displays within the Salle de France, or the Breton mannequins at the Universal Exposition of 1867. The virtue of the image d’Épinal, catering as it did to popular taste and demand, is that it made this elision between ethnography and political identity explicit: certain key symbols of ethnographic difference, costume in particular but also the Christian archaeology of the calvaire, signified not merely a peripheral cultural community but a living political identity. This reflection on the politically charged symbols of Breton regional identity is but one way of emphasising the political divisions found throughout provincial France and between Paris and the provinces. The other political families of France had likewise coloured the political traditions of the countryside by the advent of the Third Republic. The doubled use of the qualification “political” in the previous sentence is of the utmost importance for I would argue that the almost instinctive conflation of “tradition” with “political tradition” in the French context is one of several factors rendering the historical representation of the symbols of the provinces so problematic. If, in the nineteenth century, Lower Brittany had been seen as dominated by Church authority, Sudhir Hazareesingh has identified the Isère, the Rhône and the Yonne as Napoleonic bastions during the same period, as something of a distinct political community

46 See the remarkable broadside in Henri George, La belle histoire des images d’Épinal (Paris, 1996), p. 91. ethnographic display and political narrative 135 with its own material culture—from snuff boxes and beer bottles to but- tons and wall-hangings—commemorating the exploits of the emperor who defied both king and Church. And of course, Corsica, another ethno- graphically distinctive region, a region of real flagship potential, had long been coloured by its Bonapartist associations. Maurice Agulhon similarly has studied how the “folklore” of the Republic, most importantly the celebration of 14 July, took root in other departments such as the Hérault, the Var and Limousin. But nineteenth-century Republicanism was just one of several political cultures finding ethnographic or folkloric (material) expression in France during a period of competing national narratives.47 Ethnography, popular or otherwise, trades on and reinforces certain indices of cultural difference, whether language, dress, unique genres de vie and folkways, fêtes, or special modes of production. The problem in the French context, however, is that these indices of ethnographic difference, when applied to rural populations within the hexagon, all too readily pointed to the very real polarising political differences that had fractured the nation since 1789. Artefacts of popular art and tradition came to signify the divisions of the nation: a very shaky foundation on which to build a unifying national imagery. Indeed it is in response to these latent divisions within the national community that Republicanism articulated its universalistic pretensions. In an atmosphere of political consensus regarding the role of the peasantry within the larger narrative of national becoming, a popular ethnography trading on the emotive potential of certain symbols of the rural periphery can be used to reinforce a unifying vision of national identity; the rural in this context has the potential to serve as a repository of symbols ready to aid in the search for—or rather in the construction of— national origins. But in the French context of the 1880s and 1890s, where a Republican, triumphalist narrative of urban civilisation intersected with the prejudices of anthropological science and the fraught history of rural, political intransigence, the relationship between peasant ethnography and the Republican vision of the nation proved incompatible and ultimately divisive.48

47 Sudhir Hazareesingh, La Légende de Napoléon (Paris, 2005); and Maurice Agulhon (ed.), Cultures et folklores républicains (Paris, 1995). 48 In the decades to follow, the same project would prove even more divisive. The châ- teau de Sully-sur-Loire was purchased by the French state in late 1941 in order to transform it into the Musée de la Paysannerie. The project, along with other newly founded bodies such as the Corporation paysanne, was an outgrowth of the National Revolution’s provin- cialist ideology. See Franck Alengry, Principes généraux de la philosophie sociale et politique du Maréchal Pétain (Paris, 1943), p. 11.

Displaying the Arlésienne: Museums, Folklife and Regional Identity in France

Anne Dymond

Although folklore was integral to the development of many European national identities, its place in nineteenth-century France was equivocal. While certain ‘picturesque’ regional traditions were validated early in the century, in general, the embrace of the folk came later and more sporadically in France than in other European countries. This paper examines one of France’s first regional ethnographic museums in order to reveal the evolving dynamic of regional culture and its fluid relation to the central administration’s efforts to circumscribe French national identity through the museum system. While the museum is, in some ways, symptomatic of the larger folklore movement that swept through Europe in the nineteenth century, its particularities reveal much about the political history and concomitant institutional structures that shaped both the discipline of folklore studies and the positioning of any regional revivals at the end of the century in France.1

Mistral and the Provençal Revival By the 1890s, Frédéric Mistral was well-known as the Provençal poet who had spearheaded a regional literary revival. In 1854, Mistral and six compatriots had founded a society called the Félibrige, a term they coined from the Provençal word félibres meaning doctor of laws, scribe or, in some

1 On French regionalism, see especially Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 166–213; and Julian Wright, The Regionalist Move- ment in France, 1890–1914: Jean Charles-Brun and French Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 43–75; on the larger debate over peasants and French identity see Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France (Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1993); James R. Lehning, Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France During the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); on southern regionalism in particular see Vera Mark, “In Search of the Occitan Village: Regionalist Ideologies and the Ethnography of Southern France”, Anthropological Quarterly 60, no. 2 (April 1987), pp. 64–69; on the twentieth century, Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars Over Cultural Identity 1900–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), and Shanny Peer, France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 138 anne dymond accounts, freethinker.2 The group promoted the growth of a literary movement written in the local tongue, often published in their yearly almanac, the Armana Provençau. The literature associated with the movement generally posited authenticity in a version of Provence that was unaffected by modernisation, devoutly Christian, decidedly rural, and that did not include outside influences. Although the Félibres looked back to the Mid- dle Ages, they did not seek to revive the troubadour tradition, but rather to justify an ambitious, heroic poetry written in contemporary dialect.3 Mistral’s epic poem Mirèio exemplifies the inherent contradictions in this programme. Published in 1859, the text was clearly modelled on works by both Virgil and Dante, who were not viewed as foreign and whose influence was instead construed as evidence of a direct link to the region’s classical heritage. Yet, arguably, the poem’s real significance was its attempt to record, model and stimulate authenticity through accounts that were almost ethnographic in their descriptive completeness.4 Written in Provençal, the poem included descriptions of behaviour from dances to agricultural activities, mythology and, of course, dress. Mistral drew on his own experience, still extant oral traditions, and the pre-existing Provençal literary tradition that dated back to the Middle Ages. As Rudolf Schenda has argued, Mistral crammed “the maximum possible number of distinctive Provençal words into his literary bundle” so that it would function as “a Provençal encyclopedia, a Provençal Bible, the universal Proven- çal text.”5 This effort at comprehensiveness, however, created an artificial language, spoken by no-one, and ridiculed by some in the region.6 The apparent inclusiveness was essential to the successful creation of a boundary that claimed to know the true essence of the region and defined authenticity.7

2 On the movement in general see Philippe Martel, “Le Félibrige”, in Les Lieux de Mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, vol. 3 book 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92), pp. 566–611; Pierre Pasquini, “Le Félibrige et les traditions”, Ethnologie française 18, no. 3 (July–Sept. 1988), pp. 257–266. 3 Thomas R. Hart, “La Reneissènço felibrenco”, Journal of European Studies 25, no. 4 (1995), pp. 399–411. 4 Rudolf Schenda, “Frédéric Mistral’s Poem Mireille and Provençal Identity”, in Religion, Myth, and Folklore in the World’s Epics: The Kalevala and its Predecessors, ed. Lauri Honko (New York and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 366–367. On the limits of Mistral’s ‘ethnography’ see Jean-Claude Bouvier, “Frédéric Mistral et l’ethnographie d’après Lou Tresor dóu Félibrige”, Folkore 39, no. 202–204 (1986), pp. 5–17. 5 Schenda, “Frédéric Mistral’s Poem Mireille”, pp. 367–368. 6 Ibid., pp. 367–368. 7 Another of its paradoxes remains that the work’s success derives in part from its translation into French and subsequent production as the opera Mireille by Gounod, who did museums, folklife and regional identity in france 139

Although the Félibres became the dominant representatives of Proven- çal life, the group was neither uniform—in political, cultural, or artistic matters8—nor without detractors and competitors. In both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the group in general and Mistral in particular were criticised for privileging the area around Arles as normative in everything from its orthography to its folk tales, as well as for cobbling together from ancient and contemporary sources an artificial language that erased local particularities.9 Despite his focus on language, Mistral was always interested in more than just a literary revival. In 1896 Mistral announced that he wished to create a more enduring statement of Provençal tradition; he planned to build a “Pantheon of Provence” that would bring together “all the memories of our race.”10 The museum he created to this end—named in Proven- çal, the Museon Arlaten, or museum of Arles—is usually described as an ethnographic museum. And indeed, the museum collected and exhibited objects one might expect to find in a regional ethnographic museum: local clothing, tools, and examples of cultural traditions that might fall into the category ‘folk’ art. But Mistral intended much more than a merely ethnographic compilation of objects. The museum would, he hoped: salvage the remnants of our former national originality, for the world is careering with vertiginous speed towards horrible uniformity, ugliness and boredom. The collections in our museums may turn out to be the lifelines that hold the roots of future renaissances.11

not include Provençal musical themes in his opera, which apparently distressed Mistral and which contrasts notably with Bizet’s inclusion of such themes; see J. Clamon, “Bizet et le folklore Provençal”, Revue de Musicologie 19 no. 68 (Nov. 1938), pp. 150–153. 8 On the diversity of political belief, see Wright, The Regionalist Movement pp. 43–75. 9 See summary in Schenda, “Frédéric Mistral’s Poem Mireille”, pp. 361–363, and 367– 368; Bouvier, “Frédéric Mistral et l’ethnographie”, p. 11. 10 Charles Galtier and Jean-Maurice Rouquette, La Provence et Frédéric Mistral: Mistral au Museon Arlaten (Arles: Cuénot, n.d.), p. 8. Many of the accounts of the Museon Arlaten are by members or those closely allied with the Félibrige, and consequently even current attempts at scholarly discussion are often limited, as discussed in Marie-Hélène Guyon- net, “Une Provence ‘éternelle’: les musées félibréns”, Ethnologie française 37, no. 2 (2003), pp. 391–397. For more scholarly accounts see that by the current Director of the museum, Dominique Séréna-Allier, “Mistral et ‘la renaissance de la Provence’: l’invention du Museon Arlaten”, La pensée du Midi—Actes Sud 1, no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 32–39; Danièle Dossetto, “Une muséologie volontariste en Provence: la galerie du Museon Arlaten à l’épreuve de l’enquête ethnologique”, Material History Review 51 (Spring 2000), pp. 26–42. 11 Letter from Mistral to Emile Espérandieu, 17 June 1898, quoted in Claude Mauron, Frédéric Mistral (Paris: Fayard, 1993), p. 313. 140 anne dymond

Even more significantly, under the auspices of the museum, Mistral also invented a festival that encouraged local women to perform their culture.12 At the second annual Fèsto Vierginenco in 1904, 320 young women— watched by more than 30,000 spectators in Arles’s Roman arena—pledged to uphold ‘Provençal tradition’ by wearing the ‘traditional’ costume of Arles. The museum and the attendant folk festival created a particular vision of a region, defined a normative tradition, and used the female form to police that boundary. Like many other French folkloric compila- tions, the group took its geographic boundaries from pre-revolutionary administrative areas, which were now of cultural, not administrative, construction. It displayed Provence as a seamless entity, unfettered by internal dissent of any kind, stretching back to the mists of time, rooted in the traditions of its classical heritage, and based in the city of Arles. The Museon Arlaten, in its efforts to be “the museum of a region, the complete representation of a land [pays]”,13 is often seen as part of the European-wide interest in a kind of salvage ethnography of European folk cultures (which we might see as working hand in hand with nation- building).14 Mistral stated that the Société d’Ethnographie, which had solicited his membership, had similar aims to those the Félibrige had held for forty years: “to preserve, resurrect (as far as possible) everything that makes or made up the personalities of the provinces of France, including the language, traditions, customs, costumes, local art and monuments.”15 Yet, France’s wider folk movement, coming to full fruition well into the twentieth century, had fundamentally different aims, even if Mistral did not recognise them as such.16 While the national society of ethnographers was interested in studying folk culture, its target audience was urban.

12 On performing culture, see Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tour- ism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California, 1998), pp. 57–66. 13 Jules Charles-Roux, Arles: Son histoire, ses monuments, ses musées (Paris: Bloud et Cie, 1914), p. 216, emphasis original. 14 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: New York Univer- sity Press, 1978), p. 3. Giuseppe Cocchiara, The History of Folklore in Europe, trans. John N. McDaniel (Turin: Editore Boringhiere, 1952; reprint, Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), p. 6. 15 Mistral, letter to the Société d’Ethnographie, Paris, 18 January 1895; printed in L’aiòli, v. 147; quoted in Jean Pélissier, Frédéric Mistral: Au jour le jour (Aix-en-Provence: Editions Ophrys, 1967), p. 136; see a slightly different version in Séréna-Allier, “Mistral et ‘la renaissance de la Provence’ ”, p. 32. On the Société d’Ethnographie, see Elizabeth A. Williams, “The Science of Man: Anthropological Thought and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century France”, (PhD Diss., Indiana University, 1983), pp. 156 and passim. 16 Pasquini, “Le Félibrige et les traditions”, p. 266 has argued the same thing from a different position. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 141

Mistral had a different audience in mind: the locals themselves, who had to learn to play the role of the folk.

French Museums and Regional Identities Mistral’s creation of the museum must be situated within the larger disciplinary structures shaping the French museum field. Like so much of French life, the right of the central government to control the nation’s ‘patrimony’ is often dated to the revolution. Objects considered to be of national import were said to belong to all the citizens of France as their rightful patrimony, which had been made manifest by the founding of the French museum system during the Revolution.17 Successive governments of all political stripes recognised the value of such a national heritage, displayed in the capital, which would tell the glories of a united people.18 As Pommier has shown, the distribution of objects seized in the Revolu- tion and deemed culturally significant expressed a clear hierarchy. Paris, it was agreed by 1794, should have a central museum which should house the nation’s most exalted works. The inherent hierarchy created by this structure was justified by the rationale that cultural unity, best expressed by a central museum housing the nation’s best works, should parallel political unity.19 Provincial needs were addressed by 1801 legislation that decreed that fifteen departmental museums, including one at Marseilles, would house works deemed unnecessary for the Louvre. Thus the provincial museum system was founded on the contradictory position that the national heritage belonged equally to all citizens of France, but that Paris needed to have the best examples of that heritage. Moreover, from the outset, the museums (both provincial and Parisian) presented a history that minimised internal difference and stressed a national narrative. Yet, dating back at least to the seventeenth century, towns had asserted local identity through the founding of museums; and many of the newly

17 The origins are more complex than often admitted; see Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 18 The literature on French museums is now extensive, but on national museums see Edouard Pommier, L’Art de la Liberté: Doctrines et débats de la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1991); Chantal Georgel, ed., La Jeunesse des Musées: Les musées de France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Editions de la réunion des musées nationaux, 1994). On regional museums see Pommier, “Naissance des Musées de Province”, in Nora, ed., Les Lieux de Mémoire 2, pp. 451–95; and Daniel J. Sherman, Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 19 Pommier, “Naissance”, p. 477. 142 anne dymond founded departments created museums for themselves, before the 1801 nationalisation of departmental museums. By 1880, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the national museum system, and particularly with the departmental museums, which were widely agreed to have fallen into disrepair.20 The government wanted more control over provincial museums, including such measures as inventories, proper storage and display facilities, conservation, personnel training, and most controversially, the state’s right to borrow—or sometimes take—works away from their provincial homes, should Paris deem them necessary for the national narrative.21 But museums outside Paris often had fundamentally different goals than the central administration. For most regionalists, the continuing concerns emanating from Paris about how museums should be reformed did not reach the heart of the issue which was how provincial museums could stimulate provincial life. First among regionalists’ desires was more local representation. So, for example, there were calls for the return of objects deemed to be important to local identity, such as the Venus of Arles.22 But their more overarching criticism was that the separation of fine arts from other forms of material culture inevitably either marginalised regional forms of cultural production or absorbed them into the national narrative if they were deemed ‘fine art’. Regionalists such as André Mellerio consistently called for museums to be built on a more comprehensive model of éducation populaire, which would be best accomplished by displaying “everything that can explain a town, a land [pays], a region.”23 Those wishing to reinvigorate provincial life believed museums should include not just fine arts, but also the region’s natural sciences, geology and flora, archaeology, history, arts, and local customs as well as industry and commerce. The political history that privileged national over regional museum narratives also functioned to sideline the collection of ‘art populaire’, often associated with regions outside the Paris basin. The fine arts were central

20 On the centralist side, see for example Henry Houssaye, “Les Musées de Province”, Revue des Deux Mondes 38, no. 2 (1 April 1880), pp. 546–565; on the regionalist side, see André Mellerio, “Les Musées de province et le Décret du 30 septembre 1906”, L’Action Régionaliste 5, no. 11 (Nov. 1906), pp. 563–567. 21 See Henry Lapauze, Les Musées de Province: Rapport, Enquete, Legislation (Paris: Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1908), pp. 1–3; and Sherman, Worthy Monuments, p. 34. 22 On the controversy, see Georgel, “L’Etat et ‘ses’ musées de province ou comment ‘concilier la liberté d’inititiative des villes et les devoirs de l’Etat’ ”, Le Mouvement Social 160 (July-Sept. 1992): p. 75; and below. 23 Mellerio, “Les Musées municipaux et l’Education populaire”, L’Action Régionaliste 4, no. 4 (June 1905), p. 41. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 143 to the French concept of national identity and there was a well-developed administrative structure that evaluated, classified, collected and displayed them. But anthropological, ethnographic, or folklife museums devoted to both non-European and European peoples came relatively late to France for a variety of reasons.24 The country’s central anthropological museum, the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro, was first established as a temporary exhibit within the 1878 Universal Exposition, uniting material culture that had been previously been scattered all over Paris.25 Not until 1884 did it include European material culture of any kind, when the Salle de France was sandwiched between the African and Asian rooms. Typical of its day, the Salle de France performed ‘salvage ethnography’, trying to save the supposedly ‘authentic’ vestiges of a supposedly disappearing peasant culture. In displays of Brittany, Provence, and other regions deemed picturesque and evocative of ‘the Folk’, mannequins modelled costume, and objects representing the traditional occupations of rural life, such as farm tools, were displayed in vitrines.26 Saluted in the press as a patriotic means by which citizens could come to know the entirety of the nation,27 the Salle de France was also a means by which Parisians could confirm their status as more advanced than the provinces. The Salle de France avoided all mention of modernity and its impact on the cultures displayed there. The exhibit posited an eternal and timeless provincial life, implicitly equated with the so-called primitive.28

24 On the Trocadéro, see Nélia Dias, Le Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (1878–1908): Anthropologie et Muséologie en France (Paris: CNRS, 1991); Elizabeth A. Williams, “Art and Artifact at the Trocadero: Ars Americana and the Primitivist Revolution”, in Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison: Uni- versity of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Williams, “Anthropological Institutions in Nineteenth- Century France”, Isis 76 (1985), pp. 331–348. On the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, see Martine Segalen, “Anthropology at Home and in the Museum: The Case of the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris”, in Academic Anthropol- ogy and the Museum: Back to the Future, ed. Mary Bouquet (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), pp. 76–91; and Daniel J. Sherman, “ ‘Peoples Ethnographic’: Objects, Museums, and the Colonial Inheritance of French Ethnology”, French Historical Studies 27, no. 3 (summer 2004), pp. 669–703. On regional ethnography, Isabelle Collet, “Les Premiers Musées d’Ethnographie Régionale en France”, Muséologie et Ethnologie: Notes et Documents des Musées de France, no. 16 ( Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1987), pp. 81–83. 25 Williams, “Art and Artifact”, p. 156 describes the various sources from which the American collection was assembled. 26 Dias, Le Musée d’Ethnographie, p. 188. 27 Dias, Le Musée d’Ethnographie, p. 190. 28 Segalen, “Anthropology at Home”, p. 78. 144 anne dymond

In 1889, Armand Landrin, a curator at the Trocadéro, proposed the formation of a Musée des provinces de France, which would collect and scientifically display all the folkloric objects of the nation. It would, Lan- drin suggested, be an effective teaching tool that would synthesise the diverse regional traditions into one national tradition.29 Yet Landrin’s dream of a museum dedicated to the traditions of rural France was not developed until the 1936 founding of the Musée National des Arts et Tradi- tions Populaires, by which time the position of folklore studies would take on a radically different place in the national mythology.

Provençal Museums Mistral’s museum is the most successful—but by no means the only— example that reveals the failure of national museums in the provinces to relate in significant ways to the evolving dynamic between national and regional cultures. Founded as one of the original fifteen revolutionary provincial museums, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille similarly struggled in the 1890s with the national agenda and local calls for a museum more representative of the region. The acquisition records frequently admit into the collection works that are agreed to have “only relative artistic value”30 but which have documentary value since they have a local subject or were created by a local son. In 1898, the curator, Philippe Auquier, rehung the collection, shifting the focus from a national narrative that included local sons, to one that juxtaposed national and regional traditions. The curator separated out two large galleries for His- torical and Contemporary Provençal art, grouping local artists’ works— such as Emile Loubon’s Route d’Antibes—into a school, to stand as evidence of a distinct heritage. It is notable that the curator chose the term Provençal rather than Marseillais, southern, or the name of the Department (the unimaginable term Bouches-de-Rhonian!), as his organising model. The broadly inclusive term emphasised the continuing presence of pre-Revolutionary paradigms for envisioning regional traditions not wholly absorbed into the centralising narrative of French art, as well as the limits of the so-called ‘invention of tradition’. To understand just how far from the national position Auquier’s gallery of Provençal art was, one must keep in mind that, however haphazardly, the state deliberately

29 Dias, Le Musée d’Ethnographie, p. 194. 30 See as but one of many examples in the museum’s archives: Procès-Verbaux, Com- mission du Musée des Beaux Arts, Reunion de jeudi 4 juillet, 1900. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 145 distributed works to regions distant from their point of origin as a means teaching about the entire nation. Moreover, in a speech at the Museum’s centennial, Auquier lamented the neglect of Provençal artists by Parisian museums and further objected to the humiliation the decorative arts had been accorded by the century of ostracism given them in national collections.31 Reiterating the regionalist lament that the national museums excluded from their narrative the very categories of production in which regional artists excelled, Auquier’s words and deeds clearly reveal how far from Paris the provincial museum was. The official departmental museum was not the only indication of regional dissatisfaction with the national museum system. A vast number of museums devoted to local culture sprang up around the turn of the century.32 In Marseilles alone, at least three privately funded museums devoted to native culture were initiated between 1890 and 1906. To take one example, a photographic archive of monuments was planned as an analogue to Paris’s Musée des Photographies Documentaires, but it quickly expanded to include fêtes populaires, costumes, and exemplary Provençal types. That is, the archive became more ethnographic in the hope that it would function “to revive the provincial Spirit in our young generations and to extend their ‘roots’ more deeply into this soil from which we claim (quite lightly for that matter, whether Mr. Maurice Barrès likes it or not) the current methods of teaching tend to ‘uproot’ them.”33

Mistral’s Museon Arlaten Yet the most successful, most imitated, and best known museum designed to stimulate regional culture was undoubtedly Mistral’s Museon Arlaten. Here, Mistral defined the ‘traditional life of Provence’, creating a vision of the area around Arles as timeless, free of internal dissent, and rooted in the traditions of its classical heritage. To do so, the museum focused much of its attention on the woman of Arles and her costume. Here and

31 Philippe Auquier, “Discours”, in Centenaire du Musée de Marseille (Marseille: Moullot fils ainé, 1904), p. 25. 32 Collet, “Les Premiers Musees”, p. 69 points out that even though many local culture museums were ephemeral, they are historically significant; Guyonnet, “Une Provence ‘eter- nelle’ ”, p. 392 states that there are around 40 museums of ethnography or local history in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, with about half created before 1945. 33 G. Valran, “Recherches sur l’Art Provençal”, Revue Historique de Provence (1900–01), pp. 116–117; the project was spearheaded by the academic journal Revue Historique de Pro- vence, see Gaston Fontanille, “Recherches sur l’Art Provençal”, Revue Historique de Pro- vence (1900–01), p. 367. 146 anne dymond especially in the Fèsto Vierginenco, Mistral encouraged Arlésiennes to reject modern clothing, and thus the hegemony of Parisian culture, and to do more than the museum ever could: to be the living embodiment of the regional spirit. The original museum, opened in 1899, occupied six rooms in a larger municipal building. The collection repeatedly made connections between the Provence of the present day and the Provence of the past; it encouraged the museum visitor to slip between the present and the Roman age, and the present and the golden age of Provence in the Middle Ages. To this end, it avoided a strictly temporal narrative. Instead, rooms combined pieces from throughout the ages. The so-called Salle Préhistorique was typical in its eclecticism: it had a small-scale model of a nearby Neolithic cave, and prehistoric tools, but it also held children’s toys and models of the different kinds of breads and cakes currently baked in Provence. Despite the seemingly haphazard organisation, the collection did have its own logic: it conflated the present and the past, linking them through the Félibrige and the revival of the Arlésienne costume. Early texts describing the museum frequently emphasised the ‘authenticity’ of the objects, and commentators justified authenticity in several different ways. Sometimes authenticity was validated by principles of ethnographic collection as described in Dr. Marignan’s Instructions pour la récolte des objets d’ethnographie du pays arlésien, which guided the formation of the collection.34 But more often, authenticity was seen as deriving from the museum’s comprehensiveness. It was described as comprehensive in terms of the diversity of objects, the geographic range, but most importantly, the display of social difference. Joseph Aurouze, an early chronicler of the museum, related that the museum was quickly filled with everything imaginable; objects representing all aspects of Provençal life had been sent from all corners of Provence “by peasants and shep- herds, as well as by the bourgeois and nobility.”35 This frequent refrain— that the museum was supported by, and representative of, the diversity of the Provençal social fabric—reveals both the desires and anxieties around the impossibility of creating a complete collection. The museums labels were also revealing. As Charles-Roux wrote, Mistral dreamed of being able to reach all the people of Provence; con-

34 Emile Marignan, Instructions pour la récolte des objets d’ethnographie du pays arlésien (Arles: ed. Jouve, 1896). Marignan had worked with Landrin on the Salle de France, and was recruited by Mistral, see Séréna-Allier, “Mistral et ‘la renaissance de la Provence’ ”, pp. 34–36. 35 Joseph Aurouze, Le Museon Arlaten en son nouveau local (Grenoble: Allier Frères, 1909), p. 8. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 147 sequently, the museum’s labels were written in the local language.36 In reality, by this date, the language was severely threatened if not yet dead. Yet Charles-Roux justified this boundary enforcer, arguing that because Provençal was populaire, its use in the museum “bears the mark of a profoundly republican race where the dignity of each citizen is unaware of and scorns the prejudices and pride of class.”37 Charles-Roux’s ode to the glories of the language continued with a tribute to Mistral in which the language, the attributes of the race, and the genius of the museum are all intimately connected: Provençal is the language of a free people. And it is this love of humble people, this profound sense of equality, this respect for the vernacular spirit [âme populaire], this magnificent understanding of its greatness that motivated Mistral to build a museum to house all of the modest objects of daily life, . . . a museum for everything that makes up the originality, the flavour of Provençal life.38 Charles-Roux’s explanation thus connects the impetus for the museum with the language, itself taken as evidence of the supposed attributes of the race: a sense of equality, and a tradition of freedom. This vague reference to freedom would be more clearly linked to regionalist ideology in the second incarnation of the museum, which opened officially in 1909.39 In 1904, Mistral won the Nobel Prize for literature, and announced he would use the money “to expand and permanently move the Museon Arlaten to a palace worthy of housing it.”40 The discussion of the new building is indicative of what Daniel Sherman calls a virtual obsession in the period: finding a museum worthy of the city, town, or collection.41 A Renaissance palace complete with classical ruins to be excavated, the Palais de Laval-Castellane was perfectly suited to showcasing the heritage Mistral treasured. This grander space would be used to develop the museum’s themes more explicitly.42

36 Charles-Roux, Arles, p. 198. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Currently, the 1909 building is undergoing significant renovation and expansion plans, which will be the first significant structural changes since Mistral’s death in 1914. 40 “Mistral et le Prix Nobel”, Revue de Provence 73 (Jan. 1905), p. 3. 41 Sherman, Worthy, p. 156. The mayor of Arles is quoted as saying that it would be “digne de passer à la postérité” in “Mistral et le Prix Nobel”, p. 2. 42 The first had 6 rooms, 1 gallery, and one staircase; the second had 18 rooms, 2 galleries and a more spacious staircase; Guide Sommaire du Visiteur au Nouveau Museon Arlaten (Avignon: J. Roche et Rullière, n.d., [1909]). 148 anne dymond

In the new museum, the first four rooms of the ground floor were sump- tuously frescoed by local artists, a historical technique which invoked the first Provençal Renaissance. This expensive undertaking was funded by prominent regionalists, including Jules Charles-Roux, Jeanne de Flan- dreysy and her father, the archaeologist Etienne Mellier.43 In case the museum’s programe was not explicit enough, Charles-Roux produced a guidebook to Arles, which stated his goals. Charles-Roux explained that he hoped “this exhibition might give the visitor an idea of the magnificent place occupied by Provence in the history of art.”44 The first three of these rooms concentrated on ancient Provence, while the fourth showed the continuation of the grandeur in the present day by showcasing paintings by nineteenth-century Marseilles portraitist Gustave Ricard. The most interesting décor occurs in the room entitled La Provence hors la Provence [Provence outside Provence] (Figure 1). The artists, Ollier and Patrizio Rogolini, frescoed six views of monuments of Provence, such as the Roman arena in Arles and the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, in the lunettes around the room. Below were copies of famous local Roman statues, such as the Venus of Fréjus, and of course the Venus of Arles.45 The museum Guide drew the reader’s attention to the faux pilasters crowned with the letters SPQA, Roman shorthand for ‘the senate and people of Arles’ that “asserts the prestige of the Rome of the Gauls.”46 But the letters also refer to the flowering of Arles in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. As regionalist Paul Mariéton described, it was “from its first municipal freedoms that the Renaissance of Arles dates. Its republic would also last two centuries (1080–1251), participating in the admirable Roman civilisation.”47 The décor thus glorified the city’s history of municipal franchise (however limited in fact) in Roman and medieval times and drew together artistic and political heritage. Charles-Roux linked all this to France’s long-standing policy of centralisation. Lamenting that Provence no longer had the originals of many of its treasures, which were held in national museums, Charles-Roux rhetorically asked: “Wouldn’t the Venus of Arles be more beautiful if we viewed

43 The names of the donors are displayed on a marble tablet in the room, although the Guide sommaire, 1, only mentions Charles-Roux. 44 Charles-Roux, Arles, p. 215. 45 Jules Flamme, Le Palais de Félibrige ou Museon Arlaten (Arles: A. Sabatier, n.d.), p. 6. 46 Guide, p. 1. 47 Paul Mariéton, La Terre Provençale (Paris: Ollendorff, 1903), p. 410. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 149

Figure 1. ‘Salle des Barômes avec cinq sculptures antiques’, Museon Arlaten. Frescoes by Ollier and Patrizio Rogolini, c.1909. Photographer unknown; 27.1 × 35.7 cm. Collection of the Museon Arlaten, musée départemental d’ethnographie. Nicknamed “Provence outside Provence” because of the room’s depiction of Provençal works located elsewhere. her at the Théâtre Antique?”48 Charles-Roux even went so far as to hope that “Provence outside Provence” and the knowledge “of the works of art discovered on meridional soil or created by Provençal artists and which then journeyed from our home”49 would lead his compatriots to one day understand “the disadvantages of our excessive centralisation of art.”50 Thus, in this virtual temple to Arles’s classical past, Charles-Roux connects artistic glory with a tradition of municipal franchise, while critiquing the current centralisation of the museum system. Meanwhile, Mistral focussed his attention on the seemingly less political creation of a definitive woman of Arles, exemplified by a particular version of Arlésienne dress.

48 Charles-Roux, Arles, p. 216. 49 Ibid., p. 215. 50 Ibid., p. 216. 150 anne dymond

Creating the Arlésienne The stereotype of the Arlésienne was not invented by Mistral, although he would seek to police its boundaries. The beauty of the Arlésiennes was a constant refrain in the poetry of the Félibres; so too was their chastity and moral virtue. Indeed, the beauty of the women of Arles and their distinctive costume is agreed by virtually every account of the region regardless of the time period. In the mid nineteenth century, Les Français peints par eux-mêmes suggested that, along with its ancient ruins, the beauty of its women was virtually all the town had left.51 Yet at least as early as the seventeenth century, travel accounts also alluded to a darker side of the local character, never glimpsed in the poetry of the Félibres. In their description of their 1656 voyage through southern France, Chapelle and Bachau- mont described the Arlésiennes’ clothing as a little coquettish; they even went so far as to impugn local morals by suggesting that the women had welcomed them a little too warmly.52 This duality was still evidently in traffic in the nineteenth century when Les Français peints par eux-mêmes painted a similarly complex picture. The text likens the Arlésienne to the statuary of classical antiquity, especially the Venus of Arles and discusses her “excessively picturesque” costume, but concludes that Arlésiennes “are the most beautiful and most numerous courtesans of the Midi.”53 A similarly dualistic account appeared in Alphonse Daudet’s L’Arlésienne, where the title figure (although she never appears onstage) is beautiful, but also unchaste, even dangerous. The reception in Paris of Daudet’s melodrama also suggests something of the rising popularity of the Arlésienne in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.54 First published in a different form in L’Événement in 1866, a short story with the same title appeared in Daudet’s 1869 story collection, Lettres de mon Moulin. Léon Carvalho, director of the Théâtre de Vaudeville, commissioned Daudet to turn it into a stage production and commissioned Georges Bizet to create the incidental music. It was

51 Taxile Delord, “Le Provençal”, in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes: Encyclopédie morale du dix-neuvième siècle, vol. 7 (Paris: L. Curmer, 1841), p. 72. 52 See the analysis of the effects of this account see Pierre Serna, “Emile Fassin et les femmes de son Moulin . . .”, in Pascale Picard-Cajan, ed., Arlésienne: le mythe? (Arles: Museon Arlaten, 1999), pp. 46–8; Claude Chapelle and François Bachaumont, Voyage De Chapelle Et De Bachaumont, ed. Charles Nodier and N. Delangle (Paris: N. Delangle, 1825). p. lviii. 53 Delord, “Le Provençal”, p. 72. 54 See Roger Ripoll, “L’Arlésienne de Daudet”, in Picard-Cajan, ed., Arlésienne: le mythe?, pp. 111–120; Claudette Joannis, “Arlésiennes en scène”, in ibid., pp. 249–260. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 151 first staged in Paris on 1 October 1872, where it was not well-received.55 Revived some twelve years later in May 1885 at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, the play had a very successful run. Explanations for its original failure often note its rural subject and the confusion stemming from fact that the character of the title never appears on stage. But this renewed interest can also be seen as part of a larger cultural movement: interest in the category ‘Arlésienne’ exploded in the latter half of the nineteenth century. One effort at a comprehensive compilation of references to the town’s women found only six references to the Arlésienne from before 1800; twenty-two references from 1800–1849; twenty-two again in the nineteen years from 1850–1869: twenty in the ten years from 1880–1890; and a whopping 62 in the final decade of the century, with numbers trailing off considerably after that.56 Thus, Mistral’s museum may be seen as actively intervening into a struggle for control of the imagery and definition of local women. The original Museon Arlaten had one of its five rooms entirely devoted to a historical display of the clothing of Arlésienne women, as did the second museum. Mistral made its paramount importance clear from his earliest announcements, explaining in January 1896, “We will gather the collection, beginning with the costume.”57 But even outside the room explicitly devoted to the clothing, indeed, in virtually every room of the museum, the costume figured prominently. Numerous portraits—in postcards, lithographs, paintings, and even tourist posters—of Arlésiennes functioned to reinforce appropriate sartorial codes. Male clothing, while represented, was not the primary bearer of tradition; for men, Provençal identity seems to have resided in the appropriate use of the language.58 Paintings from mid-century or earlier, before there was a need to define Arlésienne clothing categorically, tend to show a great deal of variation in women’s clothing. Works by Augustin Dumas, Antoine Raspal, or Fran- cois Huard, all picture women in patterned skirts, and often with brightly coloured modestes—the piece of fabric wrapping over the dress—as seen

55 John W. Klein, “The Centenary of Bizet’s ‘L’arlésienne’”, Music & Letters 53, no. 4 (1972), p. 364. 56 The complilation was by Emile Fassin, who had been mayor of Arles in 1878; see Serna, “Emile Fassin”, p. 26. 57 Quoted in Séréna-Allier, “Mistral et ‘la renaissance de la Provence’ ”, p. 34. 58 On the less constricting use of language as the primary marker of male identity, see Jennifer Michael, “(Ad)Dressing Shibboleths: Costume and Community in the South of France”, The Journal of American Folklore, 111, no. 440 (Spring, 1998), pp. 146–172; on the so-called cowboy of the Camargue, see Robert Zaretsky, Cock & Bull Stories: Folco de Bar- oncelli and the Invention of the Camargue (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). 152 anne dymond in Augustin Dumas’s painting, Arlésienne à la Vénus (Figure 2) where the sitter wears a patterned burgundy skirt and a bright blue modeste. Although more astute commentators at the time recognised that the costume had changed throughout history, the museum increasingly valorised a severely restricted version of the dress. Postcards of regional types, some commissioned by Mistral, were exhibited and further contributed to the narrow definition of Arlésienne women (see Figure 3).59 In innu- merable images with titles like “Type Arlésienne”, the woman has dark hair and eyes, full lips; her hair is centrally parted; around her neck is a choker with a cross; her modeste is white and edged with lace.60 The rest of the outfit is dark fabric, with relatively subtle patterning, consistent with that version favoured by Mistral, but which contrasts notably with the diversity of pattern in earlier times. As Charles-Roux explains, other historical versions of the costume did not have “this originality, modest, contemplative, a little sad, and yet so divinely elegant that we still know today.”61 While there were some Arlésiennes depicted in contemporary settings, the majority conveyed a sense of timelessness surrounding both picture and woman. Many had backgrounds that were indistinct, with edges vignetted or blurred in a deliberately old-fashioned photographic style.62 Consequently, although photographic images were the quintessentially modern medium, many of these excluded references to modernity in their settings, and situated the figures in some timeless, seemingly unchanging venue. When detailed settings were selected, these too, tended to blur the exact time frame, allowing the viewer to imagine that these figures existed unchanged from ancient times to the present. One typical setting displayed a duly costumed and labelled Arlésienne standing outside the portal of the Romanesque Cathedral of St. Trophîme. The cathedral was built in the twelfth century, the so-called Golden Age of Republicanism. Moreover, St. Trophîme, its namesake, became the first Bishop of Arles in 225, when Arles was an important stronghold in the late Roman empire. The setting’s multiple significations—the Roman era, the first Provençal

59 Mistral commissioned the prolific portrait photographer Jules-Félix Nadar, who had relocated from Paris to Marseilles for the gentler climate in 1897 to provide photos for the museum, Maryse Mane, “Le Museon Arlaten”, Muséologie et Ethnologie: Notes et Documents des Musées de France, no. 16 (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1987), p. 220. 60 On the changing relation between ethnic type and clothing, see Michael, “(Ad)Dress- ing Shibboleths”, pp. 156–158. 61 Charles-Roux, Arles, p. 203 62 I thank Patricia Leighten for this observation. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 153

Figure 2. Augustin Dumas, Arlésienne à la Vénus d’Arles, c. 1860. Oil on canvas, 95 × 77 cm. Collection of the Museon Arlaten, musée départemental d’ethnographie, cliché J.L. Maby. 154 anne dymond

Figure 3. E. Lacour, 33—Arlésienne, c. 1900. Photographic postcard. Collection of the author. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 155

Renaissance in the twelfth century and the ongoing Christian tradition— were all used to imply an unbroken heritage. Subsequent events orches- trated by Mistral would further encourage the revival of this particular, sober version of the costume as an emblem of the region’s history.

The Fèsto Vierginenco The valorisation of the traditionally dressed (as defined by Mistral) and timeless Arlésienne beauty moved beyond the confines of the museum when Mistral organised the Fèsto Vierginenco.63 The first pageant was held in 1903 in Mistral’s museum itself—underlining once again the role the museum played in the creation of the image of the Arlésienne—and twenty-eight young women of Arles pledged to wear the, by then, traditional costume. While twenty-eight participants may not have signalled a united community, in the second year the numbers necessitated that the event be moved from the museum to a larger venue. What could be more appropriate for this tradition-creating event than the lineage implied by Arles’s Roman Theatre, where the Venus had originally been found? Reports of the event suggest that more than 30,000 people attended, and postcards attest that it was wildly popular (Figure 4). Mistral’s address to the Arlésiennes explicitly connected the pageant and the so-called traditional dress to the origins of the founding of Provence in classical antiquity, while also pointing to the politics of regionalism. He began by addressing the women in Provençal. Ladies, we have gathered in a place still sacred and full of memories. Right here, almost two thousand years ago, at the foot of the statue of the Venus of Arles, from the mouths of the poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, solemn homage, a national cult, was paid to Beauty.64 Drawing on the classical heritage, Mistral went on to lament the fact that the Roman Theatre had fallen into ruins, and its most famous goddess, the Venus of Arles had been exiled to Paris. He continued that, despite these problems,

63 On the Fèsto Vierginenco, see Dominique Séréna-Allier, in Léo Lelée (1872–1947): À l’image provençale (Arles: Museon Arlaten, 1997), pp. 51–53; as well as Picard-Cajan, ed., Arlésienne: le mythe? on the myth of the Arlésienne more generally. 64 Mistral, speech in Charles-Roux, Le costume en Provence, p. 236; quoted in translation from Provençal in Pélissier, Frédéric Mistral, p. 166. 156 anne dymond

Figure 4. E. Lacour 2176—Arles—La Fèsto Vierginenco au Théâtre Romain—La Tribune et les gradins. c. 1904. Photographic postcard. Reproduction courtesy of NotreFamille.com.

the beauty of our young ladies, oh Arlesians, is immortal. And today, after so many years and upheavals, the blood of Provence still flows purely and with vigour . . . Each year, in our land, we see a budding of fresh and beautiful girls who decorate the land, who are both love and joy! Because it is you, young ladies, who are the pride of our race, and you, oh Provençales who are, it must be said, our Provence in bloom!65 Mistral then emphasised that it is not just the natural beauty of the women, but their wearing of the traditional dress that makes them the pride of their race: Thanks to the dress that you wear proudly and patriotically, a dress which is more elegant than anything today, you are the glory of a people, you are the living sign of a luminous Provence.66 Mistral linked his newly invented pageant of ‘traditional’ costume to a cult of Beauty which purportedly dated back to classical times in Provence.

65 Ibid., p. 167. 66 Ibid. The speech eerily echoes Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s phrase “living signs of themselves” in “Objects of Ethnography”, in Exhibiting Cultures: the Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington: Smithsonian Institu- tion Press, 1991), p. 388. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 157

However, the beauty of the women was not enough to link the present to the classical past; it was their patriotic wearing of the traditional dress that made them the sign of Provence’s radiance. The so-called traditional costume, however, only dated back to the early nineteenth century, hardly classical antiquity, and the diversity of even this tradition had been severely curtailed. Furthermore, Mistral elided the difference between an Arlesian tradition and the tradition of Provence, making Arles stand for all of Provence.67 The Arlésienne became a sign for Mistral’s version of Provençal tradition, patriotism, and renewal.68 As a symbol, Arlésienne costume clearly functioned to mark distinction, both within and outside Arles. The long celebrated beauty of Arlésiennes was sometimes ascribed to a judicious mixture of Greek, Roman, and Saracen heritage.69 It was also often discussed as a noble, or even aristocratic, beauty. But it was pointedly not the France associated with the Ile de France. As Tamar Garb has shown, the hallmark of the Parisienne was artifice;70 in Arles, however, the archetypal woman was to arise naturally from the land and its traditions.71 We can surmise that the traditional dress of the Fèsto Vierginenco was seen locally as a refusal of Paris’ questionable mores thanks to the statement of an anonymous reviewer writing in a local regionalist journal, Revue de Provence. He explained that many of the local young women had taken the pledge to uphold tradition, and contrasted them with those who prefer “the hat and the dress of these ‘ladies’ [‘demoiselles’] in Parisian fashion.”72 At the very least, the quotation marks around demoiselles suggests an ironic implication of ‘so-called ladies’ but may also have implied the slang for

67 Pasquini, Frédéric Mistral, p. 261; also Victor Nguyen, “Aperçus sur la Conscience d’Oc Autour des Années 1900”, in Régions et Régionalisme en France du XVIIIe Siècle à Nos Jours, ed. Christian Gras and Georges Livet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), pp. 244–246 on the issue of unity and diversity within Mistral’s conception of Provence. 68 Pierre Serna, “Emile Fassin”, pp. 46–48; Pierre Pasquini, “ ‘La vraie’ Mireille”, in Picard-Cajan, ed., pp. 74–80 discusses how the construction of the Arlésienne as visible symbol parallels a restriction in the visibility of real Arlésiennes, whose role within the home was concomitantly reasserted. 69 Serna, “Emile Fassin”, pp. 21–48, gives an excellent overview of descriptions of Arlésienne beauty; he concludes she is positioned as anti-French, a kind of anti-Marianne, p. 36. 70 Tamar Garb, Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), p. 115. 71 For a comparison of the Arlésienne and Parisienne, see my “L’Arlésienne exposée à Paris et à Marseille”, in Picard-Cajan, pp. 199–210. 72 A.R., p. 119. 158 anne dymond prostitute.73 Regardless, the Arlésienne functioned as one pole of opposition to the Parisian norm. But in more complex ways, the Arlésienne also functioned to minimise internal differences of occupation, social position, or geography. One commentator made this perfectly clear: the costumed Arlésiennes represent, he wrote, “a kind of aristocracy of the Race, a guardian at this time of its most noble features.”74 As another explained, “There is absolutely no difference, under all this marvellous finery, between a child of high birth and the little peasant girl who took the dress from the family wardrobe and cut it down to her own size . . . the finery lends them all the same royal grace.”75 Such emphasis on social unification was a well-worn tactic among conservative regionalists, but seems especially common around the issue of Arlésienne clothing. The museum display and attendant annual festival fixed the limits of what qualified as traditional Arlésienne dress. From this point forward, not just any clothing worn by Arlésienne women would be Arlésienne dress: the mid-nineteenth-century costume had become a symbol of an immortal tradition, an unbroken connection to the past, a performance of identity that erased difference, that united and elevated a Provencal ‘race’. But the museum’s participation in this folklore festival also reveals other fault-lines in the French negotiation of identity.

Conclusion The example of Mistral’s folkloric museum, its parading of a postulated Provençal heritage, the proliferation of local museums, and the refusal to display significant folklore in Parisian museums at the end of the nineteenth century all expose the complexity of museum discourses in the creation and negotiation of regional and national identities in France. The regionalist movement in Provence, especially in Arles and Marseilles, used museums as staging grounds for the expression of identity, which was conceived as Provençal, with all the elisions of internal difference that the term implies. It was rhetorically situated in opposition to Parisian identity, which was equated with national identity. Some aspects of the Félibrige programme did reinvigorate local customs, especially in language and clothing revival, and the concomitant tourist interest these would

73 Jean-Paul Colin et al., ed. Dictionnaire de l’Argot (Paris: Larousse, 1996), p. 379. 74 Joseph Bourrilly, 1903; as quoted in Dossetto, “Une museologie volontariste”, p. 30. 75 Jean des Vallières, in ibid. museums, folklife and regional identity in france 159 bring. Yet such efforts to expand the museum’s objectives beyond merely preserving and documenting to the active revival had an unintended consequence: because the museum embraced a view of authenticity that did not allow significant cultural change in the end, the museum functioned to restrict cultural expression, particularly for the region’s women. Over time, such antimodernism would drain the regional costume of any significant threat to the national narrative of a unified culture. Once folk identity was situated entirely in the past—its threats contained—it could be safely enfolded into national identity, which would not happen until the national embrace of folklore by all parties in the 1930s.

Folklore as a Weapon: National Identity in German-Annexed Alsace, 1890–1914

Detmar Klein1

The Alsatian Problem: Alsatianisation versus Germanisation After the annexation by Germany in 1871, Alsace-Lorraine became a so- called Reichsland, with a population of 1.5 million, in which the Alsatians formed a clear two-thirds majority. It was a ‘state’ that became the property of the German Reich and was put under the tutelage of Prussia and the Emperor. Although the Reichsland was finally granted a genuine constitution in 1911, this did not mean full emancipation in terms of acquiring the rights as enjoyed by everybody else in the German Reich: the Emperor still had the ultimate say in the legislative and executive realms; the right to make amendments to the 1911 constitution (including the controversial issue of the use of the French language) lay only with the Reichstag and the Bundesrat and needed the Emperor’s consent; government and administration were still dominated by Germans, most of whom were Prussians; the Prussian-dominated military was powerful as ever;2 and the public display of Francophile sentiment, such as singing the Marseillaise or showing off the colours of the tricolor was still banned.3 The topic of this chapter is to be seen within the context of the still contentious debate concerning to what extent Alsace had become ‘fully’ German by 1914 and what its national character was. This question has mostly been approached by means of merely applying the categories of

1 The author would like to acknowledge the generous financial help in the form of a research grant given by the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences at University College Cork. 2 As for the power of the military, see the notorious Zabern Affair of 1913/14: David Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913: Consensus Politics in Imperial Germany (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982). 3 See lists of court cases and convictions regarding seditious shouts and emblems (based on two French regulations of 1822 and 1848 respectively, confirmed by the Ger- man authorities after the annexation): Übersicht der auf Grund des Art. 6 Nr. 2 und 3 des Dekrets vom 11. August 1848, betreffend Tragen und Feilbieten verbotener Zeichen, verurteilten Personen, Tabelle B; Übersicht der auf Grund des Art. 8 des Gesetzes vom 25. März 1822, betreffend Ausstoßung aufrührerischer Rufe, verurteilten Personen, Tabelle A; both in ADBR (Archives Départementales du Bas-Rhin) 87AL5612. 162 detmar klein

Frenchness and Germanness. Despite coming to differing conclusions, most Canadian and American scholars of Alsace stick exclusively to the dichotomy of French/German.4 The German historian Hermann Hiery claims—based, however, only on an analysis of Reichstag elections—that by 1912 the population and political structures in Alsace-Lorraine were hardly any different from those states in Germany that had strong particularistic tendencies and regionalist traditions.5 Most recently, some Ameri- can and Alsatian scholars have explored the notion of a specific Alsatian consciousness and identity that developed in the course of the Reichsland period. Alsatian identity is viewed as either a regional one within the wider concentric circle of a more or less German national identity,6 or in the sense of Allemand ne veux, Français ne peux, Alsacien je suis (I don’t want to be German, I cannot be French, I am Alsatian), identifying an Alsatian identity that is deemed to have been a crypto-French identity in a defence position against the Germanisation efforts of the Reich.7 I work with the notion of an evolving Alsatian national identity in its own right, transcending the dichotomy of French versus German. This view envisages a proto-national rather than a merely regional identity, with the potential for the region’s developing into a kind of Luxembourg.8 Subsequently it

4 Jack G. Morrison, The Intransigents: Alsace-Lorrainers against the Annexation, 1900– 1914 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Iowa, 1970); Dan P. Silverman, Reluctant Union: Alsace- Lorraine and Imperial Germany 1871–1918 (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972); Vicki Caron, Between France and Germany: The Jews of Alsace- Lorraine 1871–1918 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988); David Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913, op. cit.; John E. Craig, Scholarship and Nation-Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society 1870–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 5 Hermann Joseph Hiery, Reichstagswahlen im Reichsland (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1986), p. 444. 6 Stephen L. Harp, Learning to Be Loyal: Primary Schooling as Nation-Building in Alsace and Lorraine 1850–1940 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998), p. 159; Bernard Vogler, Histoire politique de l’Alsace de la Révolution à nos jours: Un panorama des passions alsaciennes (Strasbourg: Nuée bleue, 1995), p. 211; Bernard Vogler, Histoire culturelle de l’Alsace: Du Moyen Age à nos jours, les très riches heures d’une région frontière (Strasbourg: Nuée bleue, 1994); Christian Baechler, Le Parti catholique alsacien 1890–1939: Du Reichsland à la République jacobine (Paris: Ophrys, 1982). 7 Jean-Claude Richez, “L’Alsace revue et inventée: La Revue alsacienne illustrée”, Saisons d’Alsace, 119 (1993): 83–93; Georges Bischoff, “L’Invention de l’Alsace”, Saisons d’Alsace, 119 (1993): 35–69; François Igersheim, L’Alsace des notables (1870–1914): La Bourgeoisie et le peuple alsacien (Strasbourg: BF, Editions Strasbourg, 1981); Paul Smith, “A la recherche d’une identité nationale en Alsace (1870–1918)”, Vingtième Siècle, 50 (April/June 1996): 23–35. 8 Detmar Klein, Battleground of Cultures: ‘Politics of Identities’ and the National Ques- tion in Alsace under German Imperial Rule, 1870–1914 (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2004). For a detailed discussion see the forthcoming monograph by Detmar Klein, Alsace, Imperial Germany and the Franco-German Culture War, 1870–1918 (Manchester University Press). See also Detmar Klein, “Becoming Alsatian: Anti-German and pro-French Cultural national identity in german-annexed alsace 163 will be shown how such an identity came about through the processes of cultural and political Alsatianisation, counter-acting Germany’s efforts at Germanising. Apart from sharing a common French past and suffering from the same fate of forced-upon annexation, Alsatians and Lorrainers did not have much in common culturally. Unlike annexed Lorraine with its linguistic–cultural mix of Francophone and Germanophone areas, Alsace was a region in which the vast majority spoke German—that is, localised variants of Alsatian German, elsässerditsch, a German dialect—with only the small ‘Frenchified’ bourgeoisie habitually conversing in French. The great majority of the new folklorist movement that promoted Elsässertum/ alsacianité aimed for a cultural Alsatianness that was seen as distinc- tively different from both the French and German cultural spheres and as suitable to serve as a bridge between these two enemy camps. Although Lorraine had its own folklorists, it did not produce a movement similar to the one in Alsace due to linguistic–cultural fragmentation;9 most Lorrainers actually came to resent the growing dominance of Alsatians in all those fields that were not colonised by the Germans, and they did not like the fact that the Reichsland was often equated with just Alsace. The process of Alsatianisation started around 1890 when it had become painfully clear to all Alsatians that the instrument of political protestation against Germany was counterproductive and that opposing the Germans had a detrimental effect on their material interests. Alsatianness expressed itself not only in a cultural form, from the turn of the century it also had its repercussions in the political realm, bringing about an Alsatianisation of political life in terms of all Alsatian political agents stressing their Alsa- tianness and difference from Germanness. Cultural Alsatianness was the backup for the battle on the political front, supporting the political fight for full political emancipation and against total cultural Germanisation— a fight which would culminate in the final years before the outbreak of World War I.

propaganda in Alsace, 1898–1914”, in Barbara Kelly (ed.), French Music, Culture and National Identity, 1870–1939 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008), pp. 215–33. 9 David Hopkin, “Identity in a Divided Province: The Folklorists of Lorraine, 1860–1960”, French Historical Studies, 23 (2000), 681; François Roth, La Lorraine annexée: Etude sur la Présidence de Lorraine dans L’Empire allemand 1870–1918 (Ph.D. thesis, Université de Nancy II: Lille, 1976), p. 677. 164 detmar klein

Alsace in the Aftermath of Annexation The annexation without plebiscite was greeted with dismay by Alsatians, who for the most part had been happy to belong to the French nation;10 Germans were disappointed that they were not welcomed by their newly won ‘German brothers’ as liberators from the clutches of the French. The protest against the annexation found its expression in emigration: In 1871–72 around 8.5 per cent of the Reichsland population is estimated to have emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine, affecting in particular the educated elite.11 Administrative reports in the aftermath of the annexation indicate that the German authorities regarded not only the educated bourgeoisie but also the lower classes in Alsace as generally Francophile and Germanophobe,12 with the possible exception of that small part of the population that belonged to Lutheran communities in the rural areas of Northern Alsace.13 Many young people were voicing their anti-German protest: the German head of the administrative area of Molsheim near Strasbourg found it remarkable that the less they mastered the French language the louder they shouted Vive la France.14 Even some of the Marian apparitions in Alsace in 1872–73 incorporated national anti- German imagery, with the Madonna wielding a sword against Prussian spike-helmeted soldiers: Germany’s fight to diminish the role of the Catholic Church in public life was seen as both a religious and national affront.15 It is not only such evidence in the first few years after the annexation which suggests that Alsatians cherished the legacy of the 1789 Revolution as well as the finesse of French culture as displayed in arts, fashion, and cuisine; in subsequent decades the press and also popular cultural institutions like the Alsatian folk theatre kept portraying a certain predilection for French culture, as will be shown below when discussing the use of

10 See, e.g., Déclaration de Bordeaux of 17 February 1871, in which the Alsatian and Lorraine deputies protested against the decision of the new French Assembly to accept the peace terms and in which they denounced the annexation as illegitimate and confirmed the inaltérable attachement des frères d’Alsace et de Lorraine to the French nation. 11 Alfred Wahl, L’option et l’émigration des Alsaciens-Lorrains (1871–1872) (Paris: Ophrys, 1974), pp. 190–1. 12 See, e.g., Prefect of Lower-Rhine to Civil-Kommissar in Alsace, v. Kühlwetter, 30 July 1871, ADBR 71AL277/1. 13 Prefect of Lower-Rhine to Kühlwetter, 29 September 1870, ibid. 14 Kreisdirektor of Molsheim to District President of Lower Alsace, 22 August 1872, ibid. 15 Detmar Klein, “The Virgin with the Sword: Marian Apparitions, Religion and National Identity in Alsace in the 1870s”, French History, 21 (2007), 411–30. national identity in german-annexed alsace 165 folklore as an anti-German weapon. Although the lower classes of Alsace were certainly not carriers of that French cultural stream they nonetheless aspired to French ‘high culture’ as their reference point rather than to Ger- man culture as their Leitkultur, all the more so as there was no recognised model of a ‘unified’ German Kultur; French culture (or what was perceived to be French) continued to be of importance to most if not all Alsatians whilst Alsatian culture was in the process of assuming characteristics of a ‘high culture’ towards the end of the annexation period.16 Folksongs celebrated Napoleon Bonaparte and the role of Alsatians in his wars; these songs were often written in a mix of dialect and High German, taking into account that the great majority of Alsatians did not properly master the French language. To Alsatians, there was no inherent contradiction in the fact that songs were in the German language but glorified France, such as the song O du Frankreich.17 The German conquerors thought that the Alsatian German dialect would make Alsatians also ethnically German; the historical fact that Alsace had indeed belonged to the (German) Holy Roman Empire until the seventeenth century was seen as further proof of the German character of Alsace.18 At the time of annexation there was no sentiment of a clearly defined identity that united all Alsatians as specifically Alsatian. Identities were bound to localities and religion. Confessional antagonism between the majority Catholic population (some three-quarters) and the minority Prot- estants was exacerbated by socio-economic factors: Protestants were generally wealthier and often formed the local notabilité. Although Alsace as a geographical–historical notion had existed under French rule, a uniform Alsatian politico-cultural consciousness as such had not developed, not least due to the division of Alsace in two separate départements (Bas-Rhin with Strasbourg and Haut-Rhin with Mulhouse and Colmar: the Germans kept this division as Lower and Upper Alsace respectively, with Stras- bourg additionally serving as the Reichsland’s capital). After the annexation, what united all Alsatians was a certain animosity against Germany in general and Prussia in particular. For this the Germans could blame only themselves. If Alsace had been given the same status like Bavaria, Saxony

16 See a detailed discussion in Detmar Klein, Battleground of Cultures, op. cit. 17 See Detmar Klein, “Becoming Alsatian”, op. cit., pp. 215–33. 18 See the exchange of views between the German historian Theodor Mommsen (Berlin) and the French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (Strasbourg): “L’Alsace est-elle allemande ou française—Réponse à M. Mommsen”, 27 October 1870, in La Revue des deux mondes (October 1870), view at http://www.bmlisieux.com/curiosa/alsace.htm. 166 detmar klein or any other federal German state in the new empire, Alsatians might have developed a stronger affinity to Germany. After the annexation, French artists such as Alsatian-born Jean-Jacques Henner started displaying the iconic figure of l’Alsacienne, the Alsatian woman in her traditional folk costume with her butterfly-shaped headdress, the coiffe. Henner’s painting Elle Attend shows a mourning but defiant young Alsatian woman with the French tricolor cocarde sewn onto her coiffe: she is waiting for her lost lover, France.19 Other artistic works such as L’Alsace en Deuil (Alsace in Mourning) also had the Alsacienne as their central motif, which would be taken up by the Alsatian folklorist movement from the 1890s onwards. When Alsace was annexed there was no uniform Alsatian folk culture, reflecting the lack of a uniform Alsatian identity; instead one could find localised versions of a generic cultural pattern which was distinct enough to call it Alsatian, in particular vis-à-vis other parts of France. An important feature of any folk culture is traditional folk dress. A distinguished trademark of the Alsatian folk movement was the Alsatian woman in her folk costume, with her huge headdress, the coiffe (Schlupfkapp in Alsatian German)—indeed, she became a most potent all-Alsatian symbol which is still alive today (even found on milk cartons). This specific type of coiffe, however, was only prevalent in Lower Alsace (the area around Strasbourg and Northern Alsace). In the last decades of the nineteenth century traditional folk costumes were less and less worn in the countryside (let only in urban areas), and usually only by old people and/or on festive occasions; in some places, especially close to towns, they were on the brink of disappearing by the end of the century.20 Generally speaking, the culture in Alsace had many German connotations. Although Alsatian German contained many French words, it was still undeniably a German dialect; even many French words had been Alsatianised: changer into chang-giere, choisir into chuasiere. The neighbouring German state of Baden had similar style half-timbered houses; the famous Alsatian choucroute was also eaten in Germany as Sauerkraut; the Christmas tree was as much German as it was Alsatian; the folksongs and fairytales Alsatians sang and read to their children were often of German origin.

19 View at htpp://www.histoire-image.org. 20 Marguerite Doerflinger, Découverte des costumes traditionnels en Alsace (Colmar- Ingersheim: SAEP, 1979). national identity in german-annexed alsace 167

The Germanisation Project Still, to the German masters Alsace was not German enough; they were irritated by what they thought were too many French elements in Alsatian culture and society. Germanisation was the answer. One aspect of Ger- manisation was the flood of German immigrants, called Old Germans (as opposed to the Alsatian New Germans, though this term was not used); of course, immigration was not due to a deliberate policy as such but rather due to the allure of Alsace and the career prospects it offered especially to those who did not have any back at home in Germany (the so-called Altreich). The numbers of Old Germans, including their offspring, would reach some 11 to 14 percent of the Alsatian population by the 1900s, with a staggering proportion of 39 percent in Strasbourg in the year 1910, many of whom were Prussians.21 The predominance of Prussians often led native Alsatians to equate Old Germans with Prussians, making the two terms interchangeable. The image of a flood of German (particularly Prussian) officials was one of the most pervasive in Alsatian society, nurtured by their concentration in just a few administrative/judiciary clusters such as Strasbourg or Colmar. Mid-level and higher positions in the government, administration and judiciary were generally taken up by Old Germans, with a few exceptions being made only in the last couple of decades before the war. Shutting out the bourgeoisie from positions of political power would of course deepen their resentment towards Germany. As for specific Germanisation policies, they often displayed a petty and occasionally even ridiculous hard-heartedness in sledgehammer style, suggesting on the part of the Germans a certain insecurity as to the content and value of their ideas of nationhood. Germany had only just been unified, and identities were still much more regional than national, bringing up the problem of defining a national German culture and identity. With regard to Alsace, Germans understood Germanisation in the sense of eradicating as far as possible its Frenchness. Deliberate policies of cultural Germanisation took place in fields as diverse as language or architecture. Alsatians deplored specifically one element of Germanisa- tion: the French language was no longer taught in the elementary schools

21 In 1910 Lower Alsace counted 90,696 Old Germans out of a population of 700,938, and in Upper Alsace there were 40,238 Old Germans out of 517,865. See figures in Joseph Rossé, M. Stürmel, A. Bleicher, F. Deiber, J. Keppi (eds.), Das Elsass von 1870–1932, vol. 4 (Colmar: Alsatia, 1938), pp. 37, 46, 56. 168 detmar klein of Alsace, with the exception of the handful of small Francophone areas.22 French Christian names for newborn children were usually rejected by the civil registrars, especially if there was a German equivalent: this led to the strange anomaly that everywhere in Germany a boy could be named Louis, except for Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine where he had to be called Ludwig.23 French inscriptions were usually not permitted in the Reichsland’s Germanophone areas. Alsatian hairdressers could no longer be coiffeurs; pharmacy owners were not allowed the traditional label of pharmacie but had to exclusively use the German term Apotheke; the famous Swiss Chocolat Suchard company had to fight hard to be allowed to use the term chocolat instead of the German version of Chocolade or Schokolade in their advertisements.24 Parliamentary efforts undertaken in 1912 to change this state of affairs were futile; although the Landtag stood behind the assessment of its Petition Committee, according to which the population regarded the Alsace-Lorraine government’s course of action regarding French inscriptions as a policy of pinpricks and narrow-minded harassment, the latter would not give in.25 The singing of the Marseil- laise, shouts of Vive la France and the display of anything resembling the blue-white-red of the tricolor were deemed seditious and were punish- able with a fine or even prison sentence, especially in times of heightened Franco-German tensions; even publicly displayed blue, white and red flower bouquets were not safe from confiscation.26 Such policies were in force throughout the period of annexation; the Ministry in Strasbourg reasserted this position by decreeing in late November 1909 that under no circumstances was it permissible to display the French tricolor nor play the Marseillaise. The regulations regarding seditious shouts and emblems were

22 The Alsace-Lorraine legislative assemblies (Landesausschuss, from 1911 onwards the Landtag) wanted to give primary school pupils the opportunity to learn some basic French but did not have the power to legislate in the realm of language. 23 Eva Rimmele, Sprachenpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich vor 1914: Regierungspolitik und veröffentlichte Meinung in Elsaß-Lothringen und den östlichen Provinzen Preußens (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1996), p. 31. 24 For more details and for many more examples see the abundant corresponding administrative correspondence in ADHR (Archives Départementales du Haut-Rhin) 8AL1/9416, ADHR 8AL1/9429, ADBR 398D22. 25 Report of the Petitionskommission in Verhandlungen der II. Kammer des Landtags, Drucksachen, vol. 89, Drucksache no. 136, p. 434. See also speeches of Landtag deputies and of the Under Secretary of State of the Interior in the Landtag, Second Chamber, session of 12 March 1912, in Verhandlungen der II. Kammer des Landtags, Stenographische Berichte, cols. 650–69. 26 See administrative reports and press articles in ADBR 87AL5612, ADBR 87AL13, ADBR 132AL30. national identity in german-annexed alsace 169 never abrogated despite the efforts of the Landtag’s lower chamber to this effect.27 Germanisation through building came as an architectural style recognisable as purportedly German and/or as a statement of German grandeur and power.28 In particular the incorporation of turrets or some sort of ‘tower’ into the new public buildings was regarded as ‘German’ due to their resemblance to medieval German fortresses, as can be seen in the architecture of Colmar’s railway station. Strasbourg saw various grandi- ose public projects symbolising German power and superiority and the Reich’s determination to never let go of Alsace again. Strasbourg’ s new railway station, completed in 1883, incorporated visual propaganda in its interior design, including the folk theme. Two mural paintings connected the new Reich with the old Reich of the twelfth century: one of them depicted a visit by the medieval emperor Barbarossa to Alsace, the other one showed the visit of Emperor Wilhelm I in 1877, with Alsatian women in folk dress welcoming him.29 The central university building displayed many statues of German illustrious scholars but only three Alsatians and no Frenchmen.30 The city’s new monumental neo-Gothic post office sported emperor statues of both the old Reich (up to the sixteenth century, including Alsace) and the new Reich (including Alsace once again). The Imperial palace (Kaiserpalast; now called Palais du Rhin) displayed at the time an almost suffocating bombastic Imperial and Royal Prussian iconography.31 In 1899 the ruins of a medieval fortress-castle on top of one of the Vosges foothills—the Hochkönigsburg—were given to Emperor Wilhelm II, whose romantic leanings to German medieval symbolism led him to decide on a complete reconstruction of the Burg which from its commanding position high above the Alsatian plain would herald the power

27 Verhandlungen der II.. Kammer des Landtags, Stenographische Berichte, session of 21 May 1912, col. 1952. See also Landtag, First Chamber, session of 29 May 1913, re: Iniativge- setzentwurf, betreffend Aufhebung der Strafbestimmungen über die aufrührerischen Rufe und Abzeichen, Verhandlungen der I. Kammer des Landtags, Stenographische Berichte, cols. 1060–81. 28 Klaus Nohlen, Baupolitik im Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen 1871–1918: Die repräsenta- tiven Staatsbauten um den ehemaligen Kaiserplatz in Straßburg (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1982), p. 47. 29 Klaus Nohlen, op. cit., pp. 196–7; Alsace—Dictionnaire des monuments historiques d’Alsace, ed. by Dominique Toursel-Harster, Jean-Pierrre Beck, Guy Bronner (La Nuée bleue: Strasbourg, 1995), pp. 518–9. 30 Klaus Nohlen, op. cit., p. 195. 31 For more information on these buildings see relevant sections in Nohlen, op. cit. 170 detmar klein of him as the new master—a project that most Alsatians at the time did not cherish (nowadays it is one of the most visited tourist sites in Alsace!)32 At the castle’s inauguration on 14 May 1908 the Emperor highlighted its importance as a ‘beacon and symbol of German culture and might’.33 The Delegation (Landesausschuss), Alsace-Lorraine’s parliamentary assembly, was coerced into financing the venture by means of more or less thinly veiled hints that the Reichsland might face repressive measures from Berlin if it did not comply.34 Even non-Germanophobe Alsatians such as Georg Wolf, prominent leader of Protestant liberalism, were opposed, cas- tigating the project as a ‘phantasy building’ and as a means of creating a German image of Alsace.35 The interior of the reconstructed castle was filled with furniture and artefacts not just from Alsace but from the entire Alemannic (Alsatian, South-West German and Swiss German) sphere. There was an ethnographic Alsatian-Alemannic museum, which stressed the Germanness of Alsace by erasing all differences between Alsace and its Alemannic neighbours.36

The ‘Alsatian Awakening’ Not least due to such processes of Germanisation, the 1890s saw the birth of a cultural movement called the ‘Awakening of the Alsatian Soul’ or ‘Alsatian Awakening’. Such notions were used by the various protagonists of the Alsatian cultural movement as well as by commentators in France.37 The various strands of the ‘Awakening of the Alsatian Soul’ could be found all along a sliding scale stretching from the resolute Germanophilia of the Alsabund to the rabid Germanophobia of the satirists and caricaturists Hansi and Zislin. Most protagonists of Elsässertum or alsacianité were neither Germanophile nor decidedly or outspokenly Germanophobe but rather situated somewhere in the middle, often choosing to be deliberately vague and ambiguous as to their true feelings vis-à-vis France and Germany. Whilst all those in the ‘middle ground’—often collectively referred to as Young Alsace—wanted to resist a further encroachment

32 For details see ADBR 27AL840. 33 ADBR 27AL840/c. 34 See Der Elsässer, 14 May 1908 (no. 210), ADBR 27AL840/c. 35 Georg Wolf in Straßburger Zeitung, 15 January 1901 (no. 12). 36 Jean-Claude Richez, “Le château du Haut-Koenigsbourg: Frontière, mémoire et illusion”, Revue des Sciences Sociales de la France de l’Est, 18 (1990/91): 128–9. 37 See, e.g., the émigré journalist Paul Acker in L’Eclair, 28 August 1908, ADBR 87AL13; Emile Straus, Le Théâtre Alsacien (Paris, 1901), p. 7; Straßburger Neue Zeitung, 26 February 1914 (no. 57), “Die elsässische Seele”, ADBR 132AL2. national identity in german-annexed alsace 171 of Germanisation, there were some who were definitely leaning more towards France, such as the circle around Bucher and the Revue Alsaci- enne Illustreé / Illustrierte Elsässische Rundschau, others were more concerned with affirming and developing a truly independent Alsatianness, as was the case with the carriers of the Alsatian dialect theatre. Openly uncompromising Germanophobia was displayed in the caricatures and satirical writings of Hansi (Jean-Jacques Waltz) and Henri Zis- lin, although both tried their best to be sufficiently ambiguous to avoid prosecution. Their target audience were the middle classes, so as to for- tify them in a spirit of anti-German resistance. Zislin’s main work was his satirical magazine called Dur’s Elsass (A travers l’Alsace), which he published as a weekly in Mulhouse (Upper Alsace) from 1907 onwards. It contained cartoons, caricatures and texts in Alsatian German, French and High German, and it was sold in kiosks throughout Alsace. Zislin’s various court trials made headlines in the country’s newspapers, and he was well-known by friend and foe alike. The Prussian Minister of War, von Heeringen, complained about him to the Reich Chancellor, and especially Pan-German-inclined newspapers made it their duty to demand strict countermeasures against him.38 Some of Colmar’s businessmen, apparently concerned about their economic interests and worried about the impact of Germanophobe propaganda on German tourists, even asked the mayor to forbid the sale of the magazine in city-owned kiosks—what they thought in private about its merits is not known.39 As for Hansi, in 1910 the German embassy in Paris informed Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hol- lweg that Hansi was revered in France as a national hero.40 In the years between 1907 and 1913, Hansi wrote and illustrated several small picture books, in French and/or German, some of them in the form of satirical and highly political ‘children’s books’. Hansi’s and Zislin’s aim was to extol the virtues of an Alsace proud of its French heritage and superior to its German invaders and to combat the Germanisation of Alsace by using the tool of ridicule. Their anti-German and pro-French propaganda was highly entertaining and amusing, if at times rather crude. Their satirical writings

38 v. Heeringen to Bethmann Hollweg, 23 January 1911, PolA AA (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts), R2996; Hamburger Nachrichten, 26 August 1910 (no. 398), ADBR 65AL115; Schwäbischer Merkur, 16 November 1910 (no. 534), ibid. 39 See Ruland’s speech in Landtag, First Chamber, session of 18 March 1914, Verhandlun- gen der I. Kammer des Landtags, Stenographische Berichte; Straßburger Post, 22 June 1913 (no. 706), ADBR 132AL3. See also Statthalter (governor) of Alsace-Lorraine, Count Wedel, to Emperor Wilhelm II, 30 June 1913, BA (Bundesarchiv) R43 Film 11809/11810. 40 German embassy in Paris to Bethmann Hollweg, 28 May 1910, ADBR 87AL13. 172 detmar klein and caricatures attacked the immigrant Old Germans in particular and Germanness in general: in their iconography Old Germans are ugly, bespectacled and badly dressed, they are supercilious and have militaristic mannerisms—in short, they are a ridiculous species. Hansi and Zislin put the archetypal Alsacienne—in her folk costume with the coiffe—at the centre of anti-German resistance: she is pure and untainted by the opportunism and collaboration chosen by many men out of economic necessity or political expediency; she fights a battle against the Germans and, in her function as a mother, imbues her children with the same spirit of resistance.41 Especially Hansi’s drawings and texts portray a traditional, passé- iste, at times almost kitschy pre-1870/71 Alsace, utilising means of a rather simplistic folkloristic iconography consisting of half-timbered houses, the village church, storks, folk costumes and the ubiquitous coiffe.42 Some of this iconography was not even uniquely Alsatian but could also have been applied to areas across the Rhine, such as in Baden. Zislin focused more on satirical commentaries—both by word and image—that drew on contemporary incidents and political issues. Hansi’s and Zislin’s influence on France was significant in creating there the illusion of an unchanged Alsace which, in the case of eventual re-unification with France, would be the same as it had been in 1870. The French nationalist newspaper Gil Blas pointed out that Hansi and Zislin exposed the ridiculousness of the German victor and opposed the smile of the French to the discipline of the Germans.43 There it was, the longed-for revanche: the “revanche de l’humour” and the defeat of German force by Gallic spirit.44 At home their activities earned them frequent fines and even prison sentences due to accusations of libel and seditious behaviour; although indigenous Alsatians generally found Hansi’s and Zislin’s version of radical Germano- phobia amusing many also thought it was counterproductive in Alsace’s dealings with the Germans.45

41 See Georges Bischoff, “L’invention de l’Alsace”, Saisons d’Alsace, no. 119 (1993), 35–69. On the topic of women and nationalism in Alsace see Elizabeth Vlossak, The Nationalisa- tion of Women in Alsace, 1871–1940 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2003). 42 Hansi (Jean-Jacques Waltz), Mon Village—Ceux qui n’oublient pas: Images et commen- taires par l’Oncle Hansi (Paris: H. Floury, 1913); Hansi, L’Histoire d’Alsace—racontée aux petits enfants d’Alsace et de France par l’Oncle Hansi (Paris: reprint H. Floury, 1916 [1912]). 43 Le Gil Blas, 1 April 1911, ADBR 69AL436. 44 Le Gil Blas, 31 December 1910, ADBR 65AL115. 45 On Zislin’s court trials: ADBR 69AL436. On Hansi’s court trials: ADBR 24AL14, and Straßburger Post, 11 July 1914 (no. 795). See also Detmar Klein, “Becoming Alsatian”, op. cit., pp. 215–33, and id., Battleground of Cultures, op. cit., pp. 229–264. national identity in german-annexed alsace 173

On the other end—the strongly Germanophile end—of the spectrum of the Alsatian cultural renaissance were the protagonists of a decidedly German Elsässertum (or rather Alsatian Deutschtum): their vision was an Alsatian homeland—Heimat—embedded firmly in the German fatherland and severed from the cultural impact of France. They were organised in the Alsabund, a two-hundred-member-strong association which published a literary magazine called Erwinia, named after the builder of Strasbourg’s cathedral in the heyday of medieval German Alsace. They were dedicated to a German Alsace and to a stilted celebration of an intellectual, anti- modernist Alsatian Heimatkunst (arts related to the Heimat, the local– regional homeland) which was not based on the Alsatian dialect but on High German and which formed part of the German Heimatkunst movement. Friedrich Lienhard, a native Alsatian, was its most well-known protagonist. His poetry admonished Alsace to discard its degenerate French characteristics—seen as feminine and inappropriate for Alsace—and to become truly German and ‘manly’, whilst it also extolled the unspent forces of the Alsatian blood’s “vine flame” to be used to invigorate the German Reich’s “life saps”:46 Alsace needed Germany, but Germany also needed Alsace. The intellectual-elitist stance of the Alsabund might have appealed to bourgeois circles in principal but its exclusive focus on and celebration of Germanness was anathema to indigenous Alsatian bourgeois circles who were attached to French culture. Poems such as “Im Zorn”, which expresses his fury at the Alsatians’ national demeanour and admonishes them to do their duty in the German Reich, did not endear Lienhard to his Alsatian audience but delighted all the more Germans inside and outside Alsace.47 Opposed to this understanding of Elsässertum was the concept of a specifically Alsatian culture, a double culture feeding on both German and French sources. This notion of Elsässertum/alsacianité became very influential and was at the heart of the Alsatian Awakening: it was regarded as a link between the German and French cultures, its mission was seen to serve as a bridge between the two cultural and political antagonists, whilst affirming the different nature of Alsace, for example by means of stressing that many of the Germanic features of Alsace had been refined through the contact with French culture. The carriers of this movement—Young Alsace—were a circle of artists and writers based at St Leonard, the Alsatian

46 See, e.g., “Wir Querköpfe”, in Friedrich Lienhard, Lieder eines Elsässers (Berlin: Lüstenöder, 1895). 47 “Im Zorn”, in Lienhard, Lieder eines Elsässers, op. cit. 174 detmar klein vineyard estate of Anselme Laugel, the influential Catholic industrialist, politician and art patron. Laugel sponsored this circle which comprised young artists such as Charles Spindler, Joseph Sattler and Gustave (Gustav in the German version) Stoskopf. The Alsatianness of their paintings, drawings, lithographs and woodcuts lay in the type of topics chosen—mainly Alsatian landscapes, peasants, rustic life and half-timbered houses. Young Alsace stressed that many of the Germanic features of Alsace had been refined through the contact with French culture. A very popular motif was the Alsatian woman in her Tracht, the traditional folk costume, often represented with the type of huge coiffe as found in the areas around Strasbourg. From 1893 to 1896, Spindler published, in co-operation with the Old German Joseph Sattler, the Images Alsaciennes / Elsässer Bilderbogen, which found a few hundred subscribers amongst the bourgeoisie and which featured topics of Alsatian history, legends, landscapes and folk dress. It may come as a surprise to learn that an Old German took part in an Alsatian initiative which consciously created an Alsatian art—sign of the readiness on the part of some of the indigenous Alsatian intellectual elite to incorporate those Old Germans who were willing to be Alsatianised. It seems that Laugel was first sceptical as to the creation of a specifically Alsatian art. According to Spindler’s unpublished memoirs, Laugel initially did not have any notion of a cultural entity called Alsace: to him, Alsace was just a combination of two former French départements.48 Soon he became enthusiastic though and would turn out to be the most important promoter of the Alsatian Awakening. In 1902 he published, together with Spindler, Cos- tumes et Coutumes d’Alsace / Trachten und Sitten im Elsass. This enterprise was an expression of the paramount importance attached by the middle class intellectual elite to the task of rescuing folk costumes from descending into oblivion. In 1898, Spindler decided to start a magazine dedicated to a comprehensive portrayal of Elsässertum/alsacianité. This was the birth of the Revue Alsacienne Illustreé / Illustrierte Elsässische Rundschau. The Revue was bilingual—or even trilingual, since the Alsatian dialect was also occasionally used in order to demonstrate that it was different from High Ger- man and thus a ‘language’ of its own. Topics were Alsatian history, legends, poetry, biographies, sculpture, buildings, monuments, and ceramics. There was no mentioning of industrial reality, nor of class conflicts or confessional antagonisms in Alsace. Notwithstanding the focus on folklore, this magazine

48 Jean-Claude Richez, “L’Alsace revue et inventée”, op. cit., 84. national identity in german-annexed alsace 175 was no reading material for the lower classes: not only would they have been unable to understand the French contributions, but in all likelihood most of them would not have wanted to buy such an expensive magazine nor might they have enjoyed reading its highly intellectual and sophisticated articles written in High German. So it was primarily targeting the educated urban bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie; especially the members of the petite bourgeoisie, who would have cherished the elsässerditsch articles due to their family background with its use of the dialect as the intimate family language and of French as the language of éducation. Whilst initially fairly balanced in its portrayal of the French and Ger- man constituents of the Alsatian heritage, the Revue increasingly saw the need to stress the French element. It affirmed that this heritage needed not only remembering but also active sustaining in the fight against the encroachment of a continuing Germanisation which it feared might crush the French element unless countermeasures were taken. This Francophile tendency became more pronounced in 1901, when Pierre Bucher, a medical doctor with excellent connections in the Alsatian bourgeoisie, took over the directorship and Bucher’s friend Ferdinand Dollinger, also a medical doctor and writer, became its editor-in-chief. Articles focused more on the two centuries during which Alsace had been French, and even those traditions which owed nothing at all to the French influence were placed in a Francophile context, stressing France’s generosity in having let Alsa- tians preserve their peculiarities. There was also a marked decrease in the number of German-written contributions. It is true that the major carriers of the Revue clearly saw in it more of a Francophile bulwark against German culture rather than a bridge leading towards it, and it was not for nothing that the Académie Française put Bucher forward as a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. But not all contributors were Germanophobe per se; some promoted indeed the notion of a double culture and the ideal of Alsace as a bridge, as a trait d’union / Bindestrich (hyphen) between France and Germany. Amongst such voices were even Old Germans such as the well-known Strasbourg university professor Werner Wittich who loathed any Germanisation measures. In fact, he was one of the earliest proponents of the concept of a double culture in Alsace. This was truly remarkable as he was the first high-ranking Old German to acknowledge the worth of the French heritage of the Alsatian culture. In 1900, he dedicated several articles to this subject in the Revue. He described Alsace as the battleground of two cultures, and he saw the French culture as the leader not only in the realm of political 176 detmar klein culture but also in the field of the ‘culture of the senses’ (Sinneskultur).49 With the exception of language and music, regarded as German domains, the ‘culture of the senses’, covering fields as diverse as art, cookery and fashion, was characterised as having a strong French imprint: restaurants exuding French flair, waiters dressed and serving à la française, men’s ties worn as in France, the interior home design following French models.50 Wittich thought this culture to be the strongest link between Alsace and France, since Parisian chic was the ideal for all classes of the population, and France counted in this realm as the promised land.51 That the Revue was increasingly displaying its Francophilia was evident to everybody. As for the Revue’s overall degree of Germanophobia, there was considerable disagreement amongst Alsatians, French and Germans, reflecting not just a certain ambiguity of the magazine itself but also of the state in which Alsace generally found itself. The majority of the educated Old Germans in the country viewed the Revue and its notion of a double culture with utmost suspicion, seeing it as a ploy to deny them any right to belong culturally to Alsace. Bucher viewed the Revue as part of an encompassing anti-German strategy in the cultural realm, an endeavour which was highly political: to him, culture as a political weapon had the advantage of being less controllable by the authorities.52 From 1898 onwards this magazine became the flagship of the concept of the Alsatian double culture, and it certainly played a major role in inventing an Alsatian people.53 As far as the Revue is concerned, this assessment can of course only refer to its readership, the propertied and educated classes. Why such a clientele would be interested in this enterprise is difficult to discern. There certainly was a romantically inspired interest in anything rural and folkloristic, as in many other parts of Europe. It was also an anti-German national exercise. One can even speculate in Marxist fashion that the creation of Alsatianness was a cynical tool to maintain the socio-economic power and cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie by means of diverting the attention of the ‘masses’ from their being exploited; such an explanatory model, however, needs qualifying in view of the fact that it was the Old German elite and not the indigenous bourgeoisie

49 Werner Wittich, “Deutsche und französische Kultur im Elsass”, Revue Alsacienne Illus- treé / Illustrierte Elsässische Rundschau, 2 (1900): 72, 81. 50 Ibid., 127–9. 51 Ibid., 130. 52 Bucher to Barrès, March 1909, in Maurice Barrès, Mes Cahiers, 14 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1929–1939), vol. 7, pp. 153–7. 53 Jean-Claude Richez, “L’Alsace revue et inventée”, op. cit., 84. national identity in german-annexed alsace 177 that held the reins in the higher echelons of political and administrative power. If there was any deliberate attempt at manipulation on the part of the organisers of the Revue then it was only with the aim of rallying the various bourgeois strata around a unifying issue, letting them bury their hatchets in the religious and socio-economic realms and making them stronger vis-à-vis the immigrant German bourgeoisie. A project similar to the Revue was the Alsatian Museum in Strasbourg, which was set up from 1900 onwards by the St Leonard circle, in particular by its strongly Francophile members Bucher, Laugel, Ferdinand Dollinger and his brother Léon. They roamed the Alsatian countryside to collect everything they regarded as belonging to the Alsatian heritage, such as traditional dresses, tools, furniture and tin or paper soldiers: naturally the two centuries under French rule featured strongly. In the cadre of the Alsatian Museum the bourgeoisie celebrated two kermesses, pageant-fairs which featured not only traditional peasant dresses and the coiffe but also historic French army uniforms. One of those Francophile bourgeois participants was Robert Red- slob, who promoted such enterprises of alsacianité in order to stem the tide of Germanisation.54 He conceded that this particular kind of bourgeois engineering of alsacianité was very much bound to Strasbourg and that the Mul- house bourgeoisie would not want to be involved in a Strasbourg venture. In fact, he claimed that Lower and Upper Alsace were two completely different worlds alien to each other, thus inadvertently dismissing the notion of a single Alsatian identity, despite its constant invocation.55 With respect to Strasbourg and Lower Alsace, the Alsatian Museum was seen by one of its promoters and organisers as a bourgeois “kind of rallying under the folkloristic banner, of all those who did not want to forget their [French] past”.56 According to Redslob, the Francophile manifestations in the cadre of the Réveil Alsacien were necessary because French Alsace was about to die: he saw their purpose in bringing about an Alsatian “rassemblement traditionnaliste”.57 Furthermore he deemed them useful in serving as a bridge between the bourgeois société and the petite bourgeoisie: he thought it vital to attenuate the class divisions and rally around the French issue, and in this context he even spoke of the bourgeoisie’s sacrifice of “esprit de

54 Robert Redslob, Entre la France et l’Allemagne: Souvenirs d’un Alsacien (Paris: Plon, 1933), passim. 55 Ibid., pp. 126–7. 56 Suzanne Herrenschmidt, Mémoires pour la petite histoire: Souvenirs d’une Strasbour- geoise (Strasbourg: Istra, 1973), p. 96. 57 Robert Redslob, Souvenirs, op. cit., p. 126. 178 detmar klein caste” for the benefit of the French patrie.58 Thus he involuntarily admitted that the notion of the democratic and egalitarian spirit of Alsace, so often conjured up in the various manifestations of the Réveil Alsacien, was more a myth than a reflection of reality. That this notion also served the purpose of maintaining the hegemony of the bourgeoisie vis-à-vis its next class down the ladder of society was, not surprisingly, glossed over by Redslob. The Revue and the Alsatian Museum epitomise the use of folklore as a political weapon in the battle against the Germans. Paul Acker, an émigré Alsatian living in Paris, saw in the Réveil de la Conscience Alsacienne the birth of a new opposition against the Germans.59 Whilst Young Alsace was at the heart of the Alsatian folklorist movement and, in terms of numbers, was almost synonymous with it, there was an intellectual–literary offshoot called Youngest Alsace. This was a small and elitist circle of intellectuals, poets and writers, who were mostly critical of the past-oriented folkloristic activities of Young Alsace. The members of Youngest Alsace were also called Stürmer, which was the title of their short-lived bimonthly literary magazine (Stürmer meaning ‘forward line’ or vanguard: term alluding to the illustrious German Storm and Stress period of Goethe and Schiller); they saw the Alsatian mission in being the democratic vanguard in Germany and developing an embry- onic notion of a united Europe. Despite their small numbers they exerted considerable influence in Alsace since some of them entered newspaper journalism (René Schickelé) or the political arena (Salomon Grumbach, the eminent Social Democrat). The Stürmer propagated ‘intellectual’ or ‘spiritual’ Alsatianness which, although rooted in the Alsatian Heimat, was not centred around a passéiste programme of traditionalism and ruralism. Whilst attacking the cult of the past, be it in cultural or revanchard political terms, the Stürmer praised the political culture of Alsace, which they deemed to be superior to German political culture due to its long adherence to France. They stood for the concept of an Alsatian double culture and for an Alsace as a stronghold of pacifism. They saw the task or even mission of Alsace in various realms: as an opponent of militarism and rigid Prussian values and mores; as a cultural bridge between France and Germany; as a political educator of Germany by means of transmitting to it the Western European notions of political liberty and democracy; and as a nucleus of

58 Ibid., p. 134. 59 L’Eclair, 28 August 1908 (press clipping in ADBR 87AL13). national identity in german-annexed alsace 179 a future Europe.60 As a rule, the Stürmer did not discriminate against Old Germans; in a forward-looking European spirit they embraced the notion of the cultural progress of mankind, irrespective of nationality. However, they strongly opposed any notion of the Germanisation of Alsace, and politically they fought for genuine political autonomy within the German Reich; some of them strove for the implementation of liberal objectives, others had socialist ideals in mind.

The Alsatian Theatre The folklorist movement of Young Alsace certainly centred on the idea of a unifying, all-embracing Alsatian culture, but the majority of its manifestations remained fairly elitist without reaching the popular masses. But what did find enormous popular interest was the creation of the Alsatian Theatre at the turn of the century. This was a dialect theatre whose medium was the Alsatians’ everyday language, elsässerditsch. Its principal tool was humour, displayed in the most popular of its works, the satirical comedies. The Alsa- tian Theatre created a bulwark against the encroaching Germanisation of Alsace whilst stressing that Alsace had a double culture. Dialect plays had been performed in Alsace before: music societies and associations run by the Catholic Church had previously put on stage various operettas, short folk plays and unassuming farces.61 But the new enterprise—first established in Strasbourg, then also in other Alsatian towns—had more ambitious aims in mind and wanted to create a new popular art form, a genuine folk art. The plays provide us with clues as to the Alsatians’ identity prior to the First World War, they show the content of national stereotypes that Alsatians had of the French, of the Prussians and Germans, and of themselves, and they exemplify the use of folklore in forging this identity. General features of these plays are exaggeration, wit and irony; their aim is not only to ridicule Old Germans but also to satirise Alsatian ambiguities and French affecta- tions. In places, the critique of Alsatians as opportunistic weather vanes is quite pronounced, but it is cloaked in light-hearted humour and portrayed

60 Ernst Stadler, “René Schickelé”, Almanach pour les étudiants et pour la jeunesse d’Alsace-Lorraine (Strasbourg, 1913), p. 181; Otto Flake, “Elsässertum”, Revue Alsacienne Illustrée, 12 (1910): 155–6. 61 Désiré Lutz, “Das elsässische Theater, seine Entwicklung und seine Literatur”, in Das Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen 1871–1918, ed. by Georg Wolfram, pub. by Wissenschaftliches Institut der Elsaß-Lothringer im Reich an der Universität Frankfurt (4 vols.; Franfurt a. M., 1931–1938), vol. 3, p. 209. See also Gustave Stoskopf, “D’Entschtehungsg’schicht vum ‘Herr Maire’ ”, Revue du Rhin—Eine Monatsschrift für Kunst und Literatur (May 1937); 31–6. 180 detmar klein not only as a general human foible but also as a reaction to German oppres- sive policies. The Alsatian Theatre was founded as an association in Strasbourg in 1898 and instantly gained a high reputation. A year later, it was joined by similar associations in Colmar and Mulhouse. The goal of all these theatre associations was to promote the Alsatian dialect and create an inexpensive entertainment of artistic value to the people, to the ‘folk’: in this sense we can speak of the Alsatian Theatre as a genre.62 The theatre in Strasbourg immediately became the standard-bearer of this new provincial dialect theatre due to its genius playwright Gustave Stoskopf and its pool of highly talented actors. In the period up to 1914 the Alsatian Theatre Strasbourg created 78 dialect plays, the majority of them were comedies; the comic- satirical genre proved to be much more popular than serious drama. Its success quickly extended beyond the city to the countryside. Sometimes there were not enough performances to accommodate the demand in the time slots granted by other Strasbourg theatres whose stages had to be rented.63 The foundation of the Alsatian Theatre needs to be seen in the wider context of German ‘theatre politics’ in Alsace. In the interest of Germani- sation, the municipal theatres were generally only allowed performances in German: those did not attract many visitors from the lower classes, while some members of the bourgeoisie boycotted them out of political motives of anti-German protestation, which of course had financial repercussions for the theatres involved. French language performances were occasionally admitted but required a special permission from the government authorities, which was rarely granted, not least due to the disap- proving watchful eye of the military.64 Private theatre organisers, such as music societies and Catholic associations, were also affected. German theatre politics in the name of Germanisation targeted only the French language and not the Alsatian dialect due to the latter’s ‘Germanness’. The Alsatian Theatre’s main creator was the Alsatian poet, painter, journalist, and playwright Gustave Stoskopf—a paragon of Young Alsace. He belonged to the intellectual elite on the grounds of his education, but his family background was composed of well-to-do farmers and craftsmen. Stoskopf, while Francophile, was not rabidly anti-German; he felt

62 § 2, Satzung des Vereins Elsässisches Theater Colmar, AMS (Archives Municipales de Strasbourg), Fonds Dollinger 1/10. 63 Programm des Elsässischen Theaters Strassburg 1906, p. 4, ADHR T.A. Birckel 613. 64 Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, to Reich Chancellor von Caprivi, 24 February 1894, ADBR 87AL149. national identity in german-annexed alsace 181 thoroughly Alsatian. Politically he stood for liberal-democratic ideas, which he propagated in the newspaper he founded, the Strassburger Neue Zeitung. He advocated a reconciliation between Alsatians and Old Ger- mans, but on Alsatian terms: the immigrant Old Germans were required to adapt to the Alsatian ways of life, and not the other way round. He acknowledged that the political adherence of Alsace to the German Reich was irreversible unless there was another war, which Alsatians did not want. He called for an accommodation with the Germans, the aim being a culturally independent Alsace and a politically autonomous Alsace- Lorraine within the Reich—a programme that could be interpreted both as Germanophile and Germanophobe. Stoskopf, the liberal Protestant, was joined by Karl Hauss, a major protagonist of political Catholicism in Alsace, as one of the founders of the dialect theatre in Strasbourg: this co-operation epitomises the Alsatian Theatre’s goal of creating and establishing an Alsatianness that would be able to embrace all political and religious camps in Alsace. Some of the Alsatian Theatre’s founding members and actors were even of Old German origin, yet born on Alsatian soil and thoroughly ‘Alsatianised’ in their attitudes and behaviour. The main protagonists on the stage of the Alsatian Theatre were well- to-do peasants and small town notables, and occasionally also city bourgeois. Those belonging to the lower classes were usually domestiques or they had very minor roles as ‘the people’. there was no class antagonism, let alone class struggle; everybody knew their place in society and did not question it. The absence of such struggles demonstrated the importance of the creation of a unified Alsatian people. The comedies often incorporated real contemporary incidents in the field of the authorities’ attempts at Germanisation, such as ridiculous police and administration measures against anything French in the public space. The ridiculing of allegedly typical German characteristics and of the hyperbolic deification of everything German ranged from the fairly benevolent to the acrimoni- ous. Similar to Hansi’s and Zislin’s iconography, Old Germans often wore glasses, were not particularly attractive and badly dressed. Usually they were pedantic and extol everything German, and in numerous plays they exhibited even worse traits: they were pompous, haughty and disdainful of Alsatian characteristics and displayed militaristic and conqueror-like mannerisms. Still, the Alsatian Theatre was very careful never to cross the line of generally insulting all Old Germans and Germanness; its masterful use of double-entendres and ambiguities left enough space for the audience to read into the plays as much or as little as they liked, and it could always be argued that only ‘excesses’ of German traits were targeted in a 182 detmar klein highly exaggerated form. It is clear that Old Germans did not belong to the community of Alsatians; only those Old Germans who did not try to Germanise Alsace but submitted themselves to a thorough internalisation of Alsatianness were accepted, but even then they stood out. Although the plays affirmed French culture as a vital component of Alsatian culture an exaggerated flaunting of Frenchness on the part of some Alsatians was ridiculed because it was seen as ‘un-Alsatian’ as the conquerors’ culture. As for the Alsatians themselves, their opportunism and their habit of not meaning what they say and not saying what they mean were seen as spineless but understandable in view of the predicament in which they found themselves. The most successful of all the comedies was D’r Herr Maire, a play that was fairly benign in its ridiculing of Old Germans and poked all the more fun and gentle criticism at the ambiguities of Alsatian speech and behaviour.65 Even Emperor Wilhelm II was apparently amused when he was shown this play on one of his tours through the Reichsland—it is doubt- ful though how much he actually understood of the double-entendres and anti-German gibes.66 Its main character is an ambitious village mayor who is proud of being a ‘man of culture’ (meaning French culture), which he considers to have obtained during his time as a waiter in a café in Nancy. In order to advance his standing he is on good terms with the German authorities; he seemingly supports their causes and does everything the Germans could wish for, but he secretly harbours French sympathies while worrying that the Germans might find out about his Francophilia. A couple of ‘eccentrically clad’ cyclists—bourgeois types on an outing from Stras- bourg—appear on the scene: they ostentatiously display their ‘French- ness’ in terms of speech and ‘dandy-like’ affections and show a certain disdain for the culturally ‘backward’ Alsatians around them, which in turn does not impress the villagers. There are two Old Germans: a county official with militaristic mannerisms and a ‘chop-chop’ attitude towards the natives, and a pedantic linguist who compiles a dictionary of Alsatian idi- oms. Initially the mayor’s daughter, Marie, intends to get married to the latter, who is portrayed as seemingly harmless to the national interests of Alsace. Then she meets a young handsome bourgeois from Strasbourg. Unlike the two other bourgeois characters from Strasbourg, he is not sat- irised in the play. He is a model of a truly cultured, yet down-to-earth

65 See Gustav(e) Stoskopf, D’r Herr Maire, 9th edn. (Strasbourg: Fischbach, 1904). 66 Programm des Elsässischen Theaters Strassburg 1909, ADHR T.A. Birckel 613. national identity in german-annexed alsace 183

Alsatian who perfectly masters French and High German but who thoroughly cherishes the Alsatian dialect and does not pretend to be anything else but Alsatian. After the initial temptation to marry into the German camp, Marie returns to the path of national purity and thus resembles Young Alsace’s role model of the Alsatian woman as a bulwark of Alsati- anness. The play celebrates Alsatianness in terms that are neither German nor French yet incorporate French and German elements—an Alsatian- ness transcending the Franco-German dichotomy. The Reichsland authorities swallowed the bitter-sweet pill of the Alsa- tian Theatre’s satirical criticism because they thought that despite the gibes against Old Germans and Germanisation this new cultural enterprise with its celebration of the Alsatian German dialect was a stepping stone towards a regional Alsatian identity within the wider German fatherland—away from the Frenchness of Alsace towards the future full Germanness of Alsace; therefore even public funding was made available.67 Heinrich Ruland, an influential Old German lawyer at the Colmar court, characterised the The- atre as a “very important means of preparing the masses for an appreciation of German high culture”.68 Not all Old Germans and especially not the radical-nationalist papers in Germany shared this assessment though.69 After all, they could point out that the Alsatian Theatre was deemed Ger- manophobe in France. When a French-language version of D’Herr Maire was shown on a guest tour in Paris, the French Journal des Débats saw in it a “new form of protest of Alsace against the conquest”; the Lanterne regarded the dialect as a dyke against Germanisation and the Alsatian Theatre as an anti-German tool of resistance.70 Even in Alsace itself such voices were openly expressed: Anselme Laugel, the Francophile grand bourgeois and one of the most influential promoters of the Réveil Alsacien, hailed the Alsatian Theatre as a force of anti-German resistance which would oppose all those “éléments étrangers” that were “more and more invad- ing” Alsace.71

67 State Secretary of Alsace-Lorraine, von Puttkamer, to Prince Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, 21 November 1899, ADBR 27AL232. 68 Heinrich Ruland, Deutschtum und Franzosentum in Elsaß-Lothringen—Eine Kul- turfrage (Strasbourg, Colmar: Strassburger Dr. u. Verl.-Anst., 1908), p. 163. 69 See, for example, Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, 22 October 1912 (no. 1271), ADBR 132AL2. 70 André Hallays, “En flânant—Le Théâtre Alsacien”, Journal des Débats, 27 November 1903, ADBR Archive Zorn de Bulach 10/6; La Lanterne, 30 January 1903, in “Documents— Monsieur le Maire à Paris”, Saisons d’Alsace, 24 (1954): 314–7. 71 Anselme Laugel, “Le Théâtre Alsacien”, Revue Alsacienne Illustrée / Elsässische Illus- trierte Rundschau, 3 (1901): 37. 184 detmar klein

The Alsatian Theatre as the most ‘popular’ manifestation of the Alsatian Awakening was at the forefront of creating an Alsatian people as envisaged by the Young Alsace movement. It was also at the head of rescuing and promoting folk traditions such as the wearing of traditional dress, encouraging countryside people and younger women to wear them.72 Indeed, after the turn of the century folk dress was becoming a bit more popular: Francophile bourgeois women occasionally wore folk costumes as a sign of anti-German resistance, peasant women did so because the folklorist movement promoted it and thus enhanced the status of rural people. This development was mirrored by the upgrading of the status of the dialect in Alsatian society. The Alsatian Theatre’s use of dialect caused the elites to take a new interest in the regional language, and the occasional use of the dialect in press feuilleton columns as well as the fact that some Reichsland Diet (Lande- sausschuss) deputies sporadically spoke Alsatian German in the Diet’s ses- sions was seen as a sign that some educated Alsatians started being proud of elsässerditsch and no longer looked down upon the dialect as a language of the uneducated classes.73 But this claim was more wishful thinking than reflection of reality: the remnants of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie (usually speaking French) only used the dialect when addressing their tenants, domestiques or other members of the lower classes.74 Elsässerditsch as a genuine common link between elite and popular culture, between higher and lower classes was a myth, but it was a myth which fitted in nicely with the goal of creating a unified Alsatian people. In no way did the ‘common’ dialect effectively erase the distinction between elite and popular culture, as has been argued by James Wilkinson.75 Nor can one support his claim that the Alsatian Theatre tried to cut itself off from the French and Ger- man high cultures in order to create a single, uniform Alsatian culture which would transcend both the elite culture and the popular culture in Alsace and which would abolish Frenchness and Germanness as “threats to the identity and integrity of native Alsatians”.76 Whilst the engineering of Alsati- anness certainly served as a bulwark or even weapon against Germanisation

72 Karl Hauss, “Das elsässische Theater als Förderin der Volkstracht”, in Elsässisches Theater Strassburg Programm 1913, pp. 33–7, ADHR T.A. Birckel 613. 73 Julius Greber in Programm des Elsässischen Theaters Strassburg 1911, ADHR T.A. Birckel 613. 74 Suzanne Herrenschmidt, Mémoires, op. cit., p. 15. 75 James Wilkinson, “The Uses of Popular Culture by Rival Elites: The Case of Alsace 1890–1914”, History of European Ideas, 11 (1989): 611. 76 Ibid., 614. national identity in german-annexed alsace 185 and against the conqueror-like behaviour of many immigrant Germans, the plays of the Alsatian Theatre did not attack Germanness per se. The appreciation of the French elite culture shone through all the plays even if those pompous Alsatians who showed off their half-baked French education were ridiculed. Whilst the new Alsatianness certainly ‘transcended’ both French- ness and Germanness, it did not do so in the meaning of completely getting rid of them altogether—an impossible undertaking anyhow, given the origins of the components of Alsatian culture.

The Alsatianisation of the Political Realm The formation of cultural Alsatianness commenced in the 1890s; after the turn of the century a process of political Alsatianisation set in, going hand- in-hand with the replacement of the old notables’ political system by a system of political mass parties. The party politicisation and the growing assimilation of the political structures in Alsace to those of the Reich did not, however, bring about an ‘inner’, genuine Germanisation but an Alsatianisation of the politicians and of the population at large. Within structures that became increasingly German, there was a content that became increasingly Alsatian and opposed to Germanness. Therefore one can speak only of a superficial integration into the Reich, an integration based on a pragmatism which recognised the factual reality, following the ‘head’ but not the ‘heart’.77 Cultural and political Alsatianness kept rein- forcing each other, both of them striving to wrestle full political and cultural emancipation from a Germany that was keen on preventing exactly such an outcome. The tendency of the Alsatianisation of political life was strengthened after the introduction of the 1911 Constitution for Alsace- Lorraine, which was considered by all parties as a half-hearted measure: while certainly improving the political rights of the population it still kept their status as ‘second class Germans’.78 In the last couple of years before the outbreak of the war the process of Alsatianisation got further boosts by various ‘affairs’ such as the notorious Zabern Affair or ‘affairs’ involving German sensibilities regarding Germanness and Alsatian Francophilia. A few examples will illustrate this political Alsatianisation with particular reference to the political parties in Alsace.

77 Detmar Klein, Battleground of Cultures, op. cit., pp. 288–90. 78 On the 1911 Constitution see Jean-Marie Mayeur, Autonomie et politique en Alsace. La Constitution de 1911 (Paris: A. Colin, 1970). 186 detmar klein

On the eve of war, there was an effort to create a political party which would stand above the ideological or confessional differences of the existing parties (Social Democracy, political Catholicism, Liberals/Democrats) and rally all Alsace-Lorrainers on a ‘national’, anti-German platform: the Nationalbund—Union Nationale, founded in 1911 prior to the first elections to the newly established Landtag. It was a strongly Francophile-German- ophobe enterprise, mostly restricted to Alsace, and its sole purpose was the fight for the rights of an ‘un-German’ Alsace-Lorraine which would have as much independence from the Reich as possible. Pierre Bucher, editor of the Revue Alsacienne Illustrée, as well as Hansi and Zislin were supporters.79 The public did not warm to the Nationalbund with its sole focus on the national issue, and thus it failed miserably in the Landtag elections in late 1911.80 The vast majority of voters rejected the National- bund’s barely concealed French nationalism: not only were they worried about potential German retaliation measures and the implications for war or peace, but they also preferred a particularism on purely Alsatian terms. The vision of a classless community of Alsatians, centred around the single issue of anti-German defence and led by notables, was at best a dream deemed impractical and unrealistic. What moved the Alsatian electorate were socio-economic issues of class and the question of clericalism versus anticlericalism. An appeal to pro-French national unity was simply not enough to attract voters: even in the heyday of anti-German protestation in the first two post-annexation decades, the national question as a single- issue electoral programme had only worked in the Reichstag elections of 1874 and 1887. Party politicisation had advanced too far to gloss over the differences between the parties for the sake of an exclusively nationalist programme. There was another, equally important reason for the failure of the Nationalbund: all the parties had—albeit to various degrees—been sufficiently Alsatianised, making the Nationalbund superfluous. All parties had adopted particularism as one of the cornerstones of their programmes: however, there were significant nuances not only between the three major political camps of the (Catholic) Centre, Social Democrats and Liberals/ Democrats but also within each camp. Social Democrats denounced Prus- sia as reactionary but were opposed to any French-coloured nationalist

79 Dur’s Elsass, 10 June 1911 (no. 102), 728, and 24 June 1911 (no. 104), 746. 80 Lower Alsace: 2.1 %; Upper Alsace: 7 %: Election results in Joseph Rossé, M. Stürmel, A. Bleicher, F. Deiber, J. Keppi (eds.), Das Elsass von 1870–1932, vol. 4 (Colmar: Alsatia, 1938), table no. 26, pp. 74–5. national identity in german-annexed alsace 187 revival with corresponding consequences for Franco-German relations and the question of war and peace; still, they praised France’s republicanism which they saw as nurturing Alsace’s role as a “republican bacillus” in Germany.81 As for the other major party in Alsace on the eve of war, the Centre party, there was no uniform attitude vis-à-vis the Reich but one can notice a growing shift away from Germany, especially after the hopes for a genuine emancipation of Alsace-Lorraine were dashed with the 1911 constitution. In 1906 its party statutes proclaimed that it stood for the political programme of the German Centre party but stressed the ‘particular interests’ of Alsace-Lorraine.82 In 1909 the Catholic Oberelsässische Landeszeitung—despite being positively inclined to a close adherence to the German Centre party at that time—stressed that Alsatians had not been Frenchified in the course of two centuries of French rule and that now they did not want to be subjected to Germanisation either; the paper continued saying that Alsatians cherished their French heritage which was more than just veneer, and that Alsatians did not want their Alsatian character to be replaced with a German one.83 Haegy, influential Centre politician, priest and editor of Colmar’s Elsässer Kurier, stood for a Catho- lic Alsace marked by a strong Alsatian particularism: “What nowadays is here called nationalism is nothing else but a strongly accentuated Alsatian particularism, with a certain inclination for France, a country to which Alsace-Lorrainers are bound by thousands of links and by a certain sympathy for the French way of life and welsch [i.e. French] culture. This is a feeling which in the foreseeable future will not cede to an unreserved enthusiasm for the Reich.”84 After the huge disappointment prompted by the 1911 Constitution in all quarters of Alsatian society the Centre severed its organisational links to the German ‘mother’ altogether.85

81 Hartmut Diethelm Soell, Die sozialdemokratische Arbeiterbewegung im Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen 1871–1918 (Ph.D. thesis; University of Heidelberg, 1963), pp. 167–9, referring to an article written by Salomon Grumbach [leading Alsatian Social Democrat] in Freie Presse, 6 April 1907. Cf. also the study of David Allen Harvey, Constructing Class and Nationality in Alsace 1830–1945 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001). 82 § 2 I of party statutes (1906), see Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, op. cit., p. 95 fn. 18. 83 Oberelsässische Landeszeitung, 23 January 1909 (no. 19), ADBR Archive Zorn de Bulach 2/3. 84 Elsässer Kurier, 27 January 1910, quoted (in French translation) in Christian Baechler, “L’Abbe Xavier Haegy (1870–1932)—Une politique au service de l’Eglise et du people alsacien”, Archives de l’Eglise d’Alsace, 43 (1984): 298. 85 For more details on the history of Alsatian political Catholicism see Christian Baech- ler, Le Parti catholique alsacien, op. cit. 188 detmar klein

In order to do well with the electorate, no Alsatian party could afford to be seen as unconditionally or solely German; the Alsatian electorate— and due to the universal suffrage we speak here of the whole (male) population—expected every party, including Social Democracy, to be foremost Alsatian and to respect Alsatian peculiarities with their French connections. The words of the Alsatian Reichstag deputy Wetterlé, spoken in the Reichstag session of 28 January 1911, are probably an appropriate reflection of the sentiments of most Alsatians: “We are not against Deutschtum [Germanness] as such, we are only against the kind of Deutschtum as it is acted out [in our country], the petty, harassing Deutschtum which constantly interferes with our customs and way of life and which denies us our freedom.”86 Not just with reference to political parties but also to the public sphere in general the last few years before the outbreak of war showed a growing detachment from Germany. This does not mean that certain aspects of German rule such as the rather progressive social legislation were not appreciated. But the general sentiment did not go in the direction of Germano- philia; whether—or to what extent—this meant a growth of Francophilia is debatable and hard to assess, since in some cases the use of French symbols could merely mean an anti-German ‘demonstration’. In 1909 the administration in Alsace—whose middle and upper ranks were mostly of Old Ger- man origin—noticed an alleged increase in Francophile demonstrations in the form of blue-white-red emblems and flags.87 In the same year, the governor (Statthalter) of Alsace-Lorraine, the retired Prussian general Count Wedel, observed a strengthening of Francophile sentiment in general.88 A year later, Wedel expressed his fear that a considerable number of Alsace- Lorrainers might increasingly be tempted into embracing the “cult of the French past” because of the belief that the international political constel- lation was not favourable to Germany;89 the District President of Lower

86 Wetterlé in Reichstag session of 28 January 1911, Verhandlungen des Reichstages, Ste- nographische Berichte, p. 4239. 87 Police President of Mulhouse to District President of Upper Alsace, 18 September 1909, ADHR 8AL1/3. 88 Wedel to Ministry of Alsace-Lorraine, 14 October 1909, copied to Wilhelm II, GStA PK (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz), Geheimes Civilkabinett, I/89/3624. Although Wedel was heading the government of Alsace-Lorraine as Statthalter (appointed by Wilhelm II), the actual government activities were in the hands of the Ministry, consisting of the State Secretary and several under state secretaries: throughout the pre-war period only two Alsatians ever managed to get appointed to the Ministry (one of whom was Hugo Zorn von Bulach). 89 Wedel to Bulach, 22 July 1910, ADBR Archive Zorn de Bulach 86/5. national identity in german-annexed alsace 189

Alsace warned that the broad masses were defenceless against the Fran- cophile agitation and he reported an increase of tensions between young Old Germans and young Alsatians.90 Between 1909 and 1914 Alsatian newspapers were at times brimming with news of so-called ‘affairs’ concerning the authorities’ reactions towards displaying ‘blue-white-red’, singing the Marseillaise or shouting Vive la France.91 Public incidents such as the confiscation of a ‘seditious’ flower bouquet during a parade in June 1914 (the flowers happened to be blue, white and red) found widespread coverage and highlighted the relationship between Alsace and Germany, and they also illustrated the ridiculousness of what was perceived as petty harassment.92

Conclusion: Development Towards a Proto-national Alsatian Identity In the various manifestations of the Alsatian Awakening it was ‘the German’ as ‘the Other’ against whom a genuinely Alsatian identity was being constructed in the negative. A positive construction of a decidedly French or German national identity was either not possible or not wished for. As this article has shown, there is sufficient evidence that the great majority of Alsatians cherished their French heritage, and they were not able and did not want to feel German, but they still had to accommodate to life in the German Reich. It was the cultural engineers of the Alsatian Awakening who invented an Alsace which had not existed like that before and who imagined a community which had not existed like that before either. But the idea of Alsatianness was given very different contents and was often ambiguous. The breadth of versions of Alsatianness was extreme because there were two external national reference points. The more bel- ligerent Francophiles such as Pierre Bucher, Zislin or Hansi interpreted it as alsacianité in the sense of Français ne puis, Alsacien je suis, turning it into a crypto-French identity. A very small minority saw Alsatian identity as a particularistic, regional identity which unequivocally had Germany not only as its political but also as its sole cultural fatherland. The most popular version of Alsatianness was provided by the Alsatian Theatre, with its medium of elsässerditsch. The Alsatian Theatre embodied an idea

90 District President of Lower Alsace to Ministry of Alsace-Lorraine, 4 October 1910, ADBR 80D13/11. 91 See ADBR 132AL30 with numerous paper clippings. 92 See Straßburger Neue Zeitung, 29 June 1914 (no. 178), ibid.; Nouvelliste d’ Alsace- Lorraine, 29 June 1914 (no. 149), ibid.; Elsässer Tagblatt, 1 July 1914 (no. 151), ibid. 190 detmar klein that was perfectly suited to the Alsatian mentality and the political situation of the day: to transcend the dichotomy of French versus German into a viable Alsatianness, an Alsatianness incorporating all the different shades of the multicoloured identity of Alsace as a country of transition and wishing to mediate between France and Germany. The huge success of the Alsatian Theatre indicates that this concept was accepted by the wider population. Cultural Alsatianness was the backup for the struggle on the political front, a battle which fought for full political emancipation, a goal that was never going to be achieved. The combined cultural-political Alsa- tianisation served as a defensive strategy against Germany’s attempt to fully Germanise Alsace and sever as much as possible its ties to France. This Alsatianisation would lead to a distinctive proto-national Alsatian identity on the eve of World War One, an identity that in the political realm with its demand for full autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine would effectively encompass also Lorraine. The Alsatian folklorist movement was the principal trigger of the development towards this proto-national identity, and their utilisation of folklore was seen by many Alsatians, French and Germans as a more or less covert anti-German weapon, depending on the degree of ambiguity (or lack thereof) used. The problem of identity in Alsace went far beyond the issue of Heimat (home town/region or homeland) versus ‘nation’ as explored in the Ger- man context by Celia Applegate and Alon Confino. Applegate looks at the Bavarian Rhine-Palatinate (Pfalz) and examines the nineteenth-century invention of a Pfälzer identity and the role of the Pfälzer Heimat idea as a mediator between local identities and the emerging German national identity.93 Confino takes Württemberg (a kingdom that was one of the Reich’s federal states) during the Kaiserreich period as his case study and suggests that the Heimat idea served as an interchangeable representation of the local, the imagined regional and the imagined national community.94 Bavaria provides another example of a strong regional identity within Germany; it actively promoted its separate identity from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards.95 None of these German regions/states

93 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 94 Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany and National Memory 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), passim, esp. pp. 9, 98, 188. 95 See Manfred Hanisch, Für Fürst und Vaterland: Legitimitätsstiftung in Bayern zwischen Revolution 1848 und deutscher Einheit (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1991), pp. 6, 364–5: the royal national identity in german-annexed alsace 191 ever had a foreign-national component to them: even if regional identity took precedence there was no doubt whatsoever that they were also fully German, at least in terms of cultural adherence—unlike Alsace.

project of engineering Bavarianness entailed promoting traditional folk costumes, with even Prince Regent Luitpold occasionally wearing Lederhosen.

Negotiating Progress and Degeneracy: Irish Antiquaries and the Discovery of the ‘Folk’, 1770–1844

Clare O’Halloran

In her most complex and emblematic novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), the Irish Protestant novelist Maria Edgeworth referred disapprovingly to people who “value customs in proportion to their antiquity[,] and nations in proportion to their adherence to ancient customs”.1 Among Irish commentators, this was an early identification of the perceived link between popular culture and national identity formation, and of the inexorable connection of both of these to antiquity as a kind of valorising agent. Edgeworth was discussing the popular culture of the caoine or Gaelic lamentation for the dead, which she viewed as both redolent of antiquity and an obstacle to the cause of improvement that dominated her agenda. Her further comment that “It is curious to observe how customs and ceremonies degenerate” was, however, more a criticism of the nature of the caoine in her own day, rather than a signalling of improvement. This theme of cultural degeneracy, and the tension between disparagement and welcome of it, had figured prominently in the work of antiquaries and historians of Ireland from the time of Gerald of Wales in the twelfth century. This article is a preliminary attempt to map out this interesting tension. As Joep Leerssen has recently argued in his wide-ranging inter- pretative survey, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History, “Rustic popular culture [was] canonized into the very essence and bedrock of national identity”,2 but in Ireland this process was more fraught with difficulty than it was in many other parts of Europe.

1 Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, in The Novels and Selected Works of Maria Edge- worth, vol. 1, ed. Jane Desmarais, Tim McLoughlin and Marilyn Butler ([1800] London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), pp. 57, 58. 2 Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), p. 195. 194 clare o’halloran

Beginnings As was also the case elsewhere, it was the antiquaries who first began to gather Irish folkloric material, not in any systematic way, but rather to illustrate that Enlightenment penchant for moeurs or manners, which by the early nineteenth century were being construed throughout Europe in terms of distinctive national character.3 The antiquaries of the eighteenth century were the harbingers of the folkloric turn that was crucial to the development of modern nationalism in the following century.4 However, this process did not begin ab initio in the eighteenth century, since antiquaries and their works were in constant engagement with the writings of earlier scholars. The crucial forerunner here was the Elizabethan colonist Edmund Spenser and his political work, A View of the Present State of Ire- land. Spenser was granted land in the southern part of Ireland, as part of a policy of plantation, in an effort to subdue the country by the introduction of loyal English Protestant settlers. A View of the Present State of Ireland (now considered a classic of colonialist literature) was probably written in 1596, by which time Spenser had been in Ireland for sixteen years and had held various government positions, both civil and military. He wrote it to persuade English officials of the need to develop an entirely new reform strategy in place of the traditional policy of introducing English law to the Irish as a means of civilising them. Instead, the object should be the crushing of Gaelic political power through military repression. Only then, could civility, in the form of English laws, institutions and language, be successfully imposed—making Ireland British.5 The View consists of two sections; the first being ethnographic in its focus. Spenser described the way of life of the Gaelic Irish: their form of agriculture, modes of land holding and government, religion and rituals, clothes, even hairstyles.6 But this was ethnography with a distinct political purpose; Spenser made it plain that he would only “touch [on] such

3 Leerssen, National Thought, pp. 66–70; Seamus Deane, “Irish National Character, 1790–1900” in The Writer as Witness, Historical Studies, vol. 16, ed. Tom Dunne (Cork: Cork University Press, 1987), pp. 97–98. 4 For a valuable and wide-ranging survey of the use of folklore in nationalist discourse in a number of countries, including Ireland, see Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folk- lore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), pp. 76–93. 5 Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland: from the First Printed Edition (1633), eds. Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). See also Nicholas Canny, “Spenser Sets the Agenda”, chap. 1 of Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 1–58. 6 Spenser, View, pp. 55–88. irish antiquaries and the discovery of the ‘folk’ 195 customes of the Irish as seeme offensive and repugnant to the good government of the realme” and which he represented as epitomising barbarism.7 His solution, in the second part of the work, to the problem of Irish resistance to English rule was to take harsh military measures to ensure the wholesale destruction of Gaelic culture in all its forms. The editors of a recent edition of the View are emphatic about the unique nature of this Elizabethan work: “More than any other early modern English text on Ire- land, its concerns are with ethnology, genealogy, degeneracy and cultural formation.”8 Its influence on later writers is very evident, and Spenser’s analysis of the Irish problem in terms of Gaelic cultural barbarism versus English civility continued to shape the perspectives of antiquaries, novelists and folklorists well into the nineteenth century. The antiquaries focused on here were all Protestant in religion and mainly descendants of settlers—either from English or Scottish backgrounds. With the exception of Thomas Crofton Croker (a nineteenth- century scholar), they belong to what has been called the first Celtic Revival (to distinguish it from the Yeatsian Cultural Revival of the late nineteenth century, but also to mark the connection between these two episodes). In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a number of Prot- estant scholars began to interest themselves in Gaelic culture (although most of them could neither read nor speak Irish), and to extol its virtues not only as a repository of the early history of Ireland, but also of sublime music and poetry.9 This resulted in the publication of the first English translations of Gaelic poetry and of a history of the Irish bard, for example (which had important contemporary parallels in other parts of the British state).10 Catholic antiquaries were not as prominent, in part because the objective of their scholarly work was to make a strong case for the ending of the ‘penal’ or discriminatory laws against Catholics. These had been put in place in the 1690s and early 1700s, in response to Irish Catholic support for the Stuarts; as a result, they were excluded from all political power and preferment, and their inheritance rights were severely curtailed. As part

7 Ibid., p. 43. 8 Andrew Hadfield and Willie Maley, introduction to View, by Spenser, p. xvi. 9 Clare O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate and Cul- tural Politics in Ireland, c. 1750–1800 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2004), pp. 41–55, 111–124. 10 [Charles Wilson], Select Irish Poems translated into English (Dublin, n.d. [c. 1782]); Charlotte Brooke, Reliques of Irish Poetry (Dublin, 1789); Joseph Cooper Walker, Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (Dublin, 1786). On parallels, see Joep Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996), pp. 340–341. 196 clare o’halloran of their strategy, Catholic antiquaries tended to focus on providing scholarly support for the traditional golden age myth of a learned, orderly and civilised polity in Ireland, in pagan as well as Christian times, which was only destroyed by the first English colonists in the late twelfth century. The legacies of that and the subsequent colonisations from England (and Scotland) in the late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries provided the framework for all subsequent Irish historical scholarship and debate. Just as colonialist writings from Gerald of Wales in the twelfth century stressed the barbarism of Irish society in justification not only of colonisation itself but of a subsequent harsh governing regime, so Catholic antiquaries battled against this imputation of incivility in the past as part of their case against the harshness of the contemporary penal laws.11 In their emphasis on an ancient pre-colonial Gaelic civilisation they foregrounded the high culture of the monastic and secular elites, whose literature was expressed in classical Gaelic, the language of the learned classes. For Catholic antiquaries, the surviving Gaelic medieval manuscripts were proof of that elite culture and the best refutation of the colonialist charge of barbarism. They followed the argument of an influential seventeenth-century Catholic antiquary, Geoffrey Keating, who attacked such writers for deliberately ignoring the culture and way of life of the Gaelic elite, and instead taking notice of “the ways of inferiors and wretched little hags”.12 By implication of course this was an admission of the barbarous ways of the lower orders of Gaelic society. Most later Catholic antiquaries sidestepped this awkward issue by simply ignoring popular Gaelic culture altogether. For example, the most well-known and highly-regarded Catholic antiquary of the late eighteenth century, Charles O’Conor, was contemptuous of the original Gaelic tales on which the Scot James Macpherson had based his Ossian poems. These “crude tales” were “mere amusements for the vulgar” and “destitute of taste and elegant invention”.13 Indeed, in private correspondence, he admitted a preference for Macpherson’s polished versions.14

11 O’Halloran, Golden Ages, pp. 98–99, 24–26, 38–39, 109–111. 12 Geoffrey Keating, Foras Feasa ar Eirinn; the History of Ireland, eds. and trans. David Comyn and P.S. Dinneen, 4 vols (Dublin, 1902–14), pp. 1–7. 13 Charles O’Conor, “Observations on the Heathen State and Ancient Topography of Ireland”, in Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, ed. Charles Vallancey, vol. 3, no. 12 ([1783] Dublin, 1786), pp. 653–654. 14 Fragment of letter in Charles O’Conor’s hand, n.d. [c. Nov. 1785], ms. 23/H/39, pp. 17–20, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. irish antiquaries and the discovery of the ‘folk’ 197

Protestant Antiquaries and the ‘Folk’ Thus, interest in popular culture became, for a time, the domain of Prot- estant scholars, who seemed to feel less personally implicated in that ascription of age-old barbarism than did Catholic antiquaries. However, the terms of that interest were still set by the colonialist thesis, and prin- cipally by the ethnographic approach of Edmund Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland. This can be seen most clearly in the early work of Thomas Campbell, a Church of Ireland clergyman from Co. Tyrone in the north of Ireland, who wrote an account of a tour he made around parts of Munster, the southern province, in 1775. This was less a travelogue than an attempt at social analysis for the benefit of an English readership; to draw up “sketches of the country” that would give “some idea of its present state, whether natural or improved”.15 It is immediately apparent here that social and economic progress, or its absence, is the primary lens through which Campbell viewed what was for him and his intended readership, an alien part of the country. Not surprisingly, Spenser’s View is one of his two “pocket companions”—the other being a seventeenth-century colonialist text by Sir John Davies.16 Campbell’s perspectives on Ireland and on the Irish peasantry were profoundly shaped by Spenser’s ethnographic analysis, to the extent that we can regard this work, A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, as an attempt to update the View to take account of the political and economic realities of eighteenth-century Ireland. Campbell’s discussion of the manners and way of life of the peasantry tended to focus on the same customs highlighted by Spenser almost two hundred years before. One was the caoine or keen, the Irish funeral elegy, or communal lamentation of the dead. For Spenser it was proof of the Scythian origins of the Irish; Scythia standing for barbarism since the time of Homer.17 Campbell gave the custom more prestigious antecedents, connecting it to Roman funerary ritual, but also emphasising its degeneration from classical modes, being now the outpourings of “unlettered men”; although he noted that it was the women who sang the lament. This gendered view was further developed by another antiquary who saw the performative role of women as a symptom of the earlier decline of Gaelic

15 Thomas Campbell, A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, in a Series of Letters to John Watkinson, M.D. (London, 1777), pp. 60–61. 16 Campbell, Philosophical Survey, p. 61; Sir John Davies, Historical Relations, or a Discov- ery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely Subdued ([1612] Dublin, 1751). 17 Spenser, View, p. 61. 198 clare o’halloran bardic culture: the caoine then “fell into the hands of women, and became an extemporaneous performance”.18 The firm association of orality with a process of cultural decline was to bedevil Irish folklore collecting into the nineteenth century.19 However, even in its allegedly debased modern form, the caoine could also be made to attest to the exoticism of Gaelic culture. Charles Vallancey, the English military engineer who spent his long career in Ireland and who observed Irish customs in the course of his cartographical field work, gave the caoine Hebrew antecedents, as part of his elaborate theory of the oriental origins of the Gaelic language and culture.20 He claimed that the Irish were “remarkable for this brutish custom, as it is called”, which their ancestors—descendants of the legendary Magog, son of Japhet, in the Old Testament—brought with them from “the east”.21 Vallancey interpreted all Irish customs in the light of his increasingly elaborate orientalist vision, so that, for example, the custom of collecting “may balls” (an ornamental bush), by which the young men of a district extorted a monetary tribute from newly married couples, was, in his eyes, an example of the remnants of sun worship, derived from the “idolatrous worship [that] their ancestors brought from the Assyrians”.22 For Vallancey, such practices constituted a kind of living history, and the strongest proof of his orientalist theory: “the pagan customs of the common people still retained in the country, are the most valuable monuments of antiquity.”23 However, while he entered the occasional mild protest at the depiction of the early Irish as barbarous,24 Vallancey, like

18 William Beauford, “Caoinan. Or some Account of the Ancient Irish Lamentations”, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 4 (n.d. [1790?]), p. 44. 19 On Thomas Crofton Croker’s experience of collecting songs from two women keen- ers, in which issues to orality and learning intrude, see his The Keen of the South of Ireland as Illustrative of Irish Political and Domestic History, Manners, Music, and Superstitions (London: Percy Society, 1844), pp. xxiv–vi. See also Neil C. Hultin, “Mrs. Harrington, Mrs. Leary, Mr. Croker, and the ‘Irish Howl’ ”, Eire-Ireland, 20, no. 4 (1985), pp. 50–60. 20 On Vallancey’s orientalism, see O’Halloran, Golden Ages, pp. 41–56. Vallancey has been called “the first practitioner of ethnology in Ireland”, (Caoimhín Ó Dannachair, “The Progress of Ethnology in Ireland”, Ulster Folklife 29 (1983), p. 4. 21 Charles Vallancey, “Conclusion. Miscellaneous”, Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, ed. Charles Vallancey, vol. 3, no. 12 ([1783] Dublin, 1786), pp. 579–580. 22 Vallancey, “Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language”, 2d ed., in Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, ed. Charles Vallancey, vol. 2, no. 8 (Dublin, 1786), pp. 276, 283. For an accurate account of this custom, see Kevin Danaher, The Year in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 1972), pp. 103–107. 23 Vallancey, “Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language”, p. 279. 24 Vallancey, “Conclusion. Miscellaneous”, p. 585. irish antiquaries and the discovery of the ‘folk’ 199 all the Protestant writers here, was uneasy about seeming to condone Irish customs that could appear uncivilised, and these therefore had to be presented in an unsympathetic manner. For example, he instanced the existence of a particular mating ritual (involving young men dragging semi-naked young women through the embers of a fire), which was to be seen, he alleged, in the south of Ireland (always the locus of such exotic practices). Juxtaposing it with a passage from the Old Testament book of Genesis (which contained echoes of the Irish ritual), he claimed that this “abominable custom” proved that “the obscene and abominable ceremonies of the idolatrous Jews, Aegyptians and Phoenicians . . . have been kept alive . . . in this remote corner of the world”.25 He thus canvassed some customs to support his theory, but made plain his disgust at them. Owing, in part, to the value placed on social progress by the Enlightenment, all the antiquaries were ambivalent at least, and in some ways contradictory, about the survival of popular customs; noting with a certain regret their decline from some ancient standard of purity—and therefore evidence of cultural degeneracy—and yet having to see this process as a beneficial one in terms of the overall project of promoting civility and good government in Ireland.26 For as long as ‘History’ was tied to the concept of progress, Irish antiquaries were caught in this straitjacket of seeing all changes in popular culture as beneficial and yet involving a loss; emblematic of simultaneous social progress and cultural decline. This tension can be clearly seen in the antiquaries’ accounts of Irish dress. Spenser had drawn on a long-standing tradition of connecting Gaelic habits of dress with resistance to colonial rule, highlighting in particular the Irish “mantle” as “a fit house for an out-law, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thiefe”, and the custom of wearing a thick fringe of hair, or “glibbe” as a means of disguise.27 For Joseph Cooper Walker, who produced An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish (1788), the subject provided a measure of how far society had changed: “the history of the Dress of any nation does, in some degree, involve that of the manners of its inhabitants: it is a mirror in which we can discern the progress of society”.28 He included an appendix containing a letter

25 Ibid., pp. 597–9. 26 For example of this in relation to the caoine, see Beauford, “Caoinan: or some Account of the Ancient Irish Lamentations”, p. 45. 27 Spenser, View, pp. 56–8. 28 Joseph Cooper Walker, An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish (Dublin, 1788), p. 80. 200 clare o’halloran recording the “Customs, Manners, and Dress of the Inhabitants of the Rosses”, a remote part of Donegal in the north west of the island. This presented the way of life of this fishing community thirty years before (c. 1750) as almost a primitivist idyll. While seeming on first appearance to be “wild and fierce”, “savage and unamenable to the law”, these peasants were the opposite: “hospitable . . . friendly and generous . . . gentle and humane”. Lacking all “industry”, they were “well contented with the gifts of Providence” and enjoyed just two luxuries, spirits and tobacco, “of which they were all, both men and women, excessively fond”. Their clothing was equally simple: “none of them had more than two garments, and those of flannel of their own manufacture”. The account ends with a contemporary glimpse of that same community, almost forty years on, and now “totally altered in their carriage and conduct, their habiliments and habitations, their occupations and manner of living”. But there is no room for nostalgia; the inhabitants were “so much improved by their intercourse with others” as to be almost unrecognisable, and this was symbolised by the adoption by the young men of fashionable modern dress, at least on Sundays—“satin waistcoats and breeches . . . silk stockings, silver buck- les, and ruffled shirts.”29 The same perspective is in evidence in a brief ethnographic account, dating from 1788, of an unusual area in the south east of the island: the baronies of Forth and Bargy in Co. Wexford, where English colonists first landed in the twelfth century and where a dialect of Middle English was spoken until the middle of the nineteenth century.30 This description of the “ancient manners, customs and language” of the district stressed their gradual disappearance in the face of modernisation, represented by “English manners and language”, but not in such a way as to indicate regret.31

29 “An Account of the Customs, Manners, and Dress of the Inhabitants of The Rosses on the Coast of the County of Donegal, Ireland. In a Letter to the Author”, in ibid., pp. 143–144, 146, 148. 30 See T.P. Dolan and Diarmaid O Muirithe, The Dialect of Forth and Bargy, Co. Wexford, Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996). 31 Vallancey, “Of the Language, Manners and Customs of an Anglo-Saxon Colony, settled in Forth and Bargy”, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 2 (1788), pp. 19–41. irish antiquaries and the discovery of the ‘folk’ 201

Antiquarianism, Folklore and Popular Unrest: Thomas Crofton Croker This phase of Protestant antiquarian interest in the Gaelic world was brought to an end by the political crisis of the 1790s, which culminated in the rebellion of 1798, in which thirty thousand people are estimated to have died. It was a shocking blow to the confidence of the Anglican ruling elite and was seen by them as a reprise of the massacre of Protestants by Catholics in 1641, a traumatic event that had remained strong in their historical memory. That the vast majority of the rebels were Catholic, and many Gaelic speaking, caused, among other things, a discrediting of that antiquarian interest in, and extolling of, the Gaelic past and culture, now confirmed as inextricably bound up with sedition and barbarism. In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion and of the Act of Union of 1800, that antiquarian approach to popular culture was taken over by Protes- tant novelists, among them Edgeworth, Sidney Owenson (Lady Morgan) and Charles Maturin, who together developed what is now recognised as a distinct literary sub-genre, the ‘national tale’, which explored the legacies of colonialism, and military and civil strife in modern Ireland.32 Under- standing the present had to involve an engagement with the past, but it was a characteristic of the ‘national tale’ that the boundaries between past and present were blurred; that the past, usually embodied in the form of the descendant of a Gaelic chieftain still wearing the ‘ancient Irish dress’, lived on into the present, offering the possibility of a living reconciliation with troubled history. These contemporary novels relied on antiquarian folklore to provide colour and exoticism, but also to signify the long reach of that past. Thus, as we have seen, Edgeworth, a keen reader of Spenser, cited him at length on the ‘mantle’ and featured a lengthy note on the caoine (along with other customs and folk beliefs) in the glossary to Castle Rackrent; Owenson had the heroine of The Wild Irish Girl (1812) kitted out in one of the costumes Walker had described in his Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish; and, most tellingly of all, the hero of Maturin’s The Milesian Chief (1812), who is plotting a follow-on rebellion to that of 1798, wears the mantle and glibb of Spenser’s Elizabethan Irish rebel.33

32 On the ‘national tale’, see Ina Ferris, The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 33 Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, pp. 9, 55–58, 60–61. On the use made by the novelists of the work of Spenser and Walker, see also Clare O’Halloran, “Harping on the Past: 202 clare o’halloran

When, in the 1820s, a new generation of Protestant antiquaries resumed the study of manners and customs, memories of the recent rebellion and growing concerns about agrarian secret society activity meant that the age-old debate about the still untamed nature of peasant society continued as the dominant context for mediating Irish folk culture. Thus, Thomas Crofton Croker’s Researches in the South of Ireland of 1824, which is part travelogue and part study of popular culture, is framed by the experience of violence in the recent as well as distant past. It begins with an abstract of Irish history since the twelfth century that stresses a “conquest without system, an irregular government” and “unprincipled warfare”, the blame for which he attributes more to English “plunderers and tyrants” than Irish “rebels and traitors”. It concludes with an eyewitness account of the 1798 rebellion, which Croker calls “a faithful picture of the excesses committed by an intoxicated multitude”.34 Emphasising the ongoing threat of peasant violence, he warns that prophecies of “the overthrow of English domin- ion” were being circulated “by secret agency throughout the country” and thus keeping “alive the embers of rebellion”.35 This warning is preceded by an outline of peasant character that calls on the twelfth-century colonial writer Gerald of Wales in support of its primitivist typology: An Irishman is the sport of his feelings; with passions the most violent and sensitive, he is alternately the child of despondency or of levity; his joy or his grief has no medium; he loves or he hates, and hurried away by the ardent stream of a heated fancy, naturally enthusiastic, he is guilty of a thousand absurdities. This “nobleness of savage nature” displayed by “the secluded Irish moun- taineer” would need careful stewardship if chaos were not to descend in the shape of further rebellion.36 While Croker declares in the Advertise- ment to this work that “Politics have carefully been avoided”, this is contradicted by his clear political message about the need for good but firm government under the Union.37 Of necessity this message was directed

Translating Antiquarian Learning into Popular Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Ire- land”, in Exploring Cultural History, eds Melissa Calaresu, Joan Pau Rubies, Filippo de Vivo, (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 327–343. 34 Thomas Crofton Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland, 1812–22 (1824; repr. Dub- lin: Irish Academic Press, 1981), pp. 2, 6, 14. See also, Neil C. Hultin and Warren U. Ober, “An O’Connellite in Whitehall: Thomas Crofton Croker, 1798–1854”, Eire-Ireland 28, no. 3 (1993), p. 66. 35 Croker, Researches, p. 16. 36 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 37 Ibid., “Advertisement”, n.p. irish antiquaries and the discovery of the ‘folk’ 203 at the metropolitan centre, London, where all power now resided (and indeed where he himself worked, as a clerk in the Admiralty); in other words, his desired readers were English not Irish, Protestant rather than Catholic. This, together with the Spenserian ethnographic framework within which he, like his predecessors, continued to operate, determined to a large extent the kind of folklore that he collected, and the way in which he interpreted it. Thus, in his account of the caoine and other funerary customs, which explained what he called these “superstitions” in terms of the tenets of the “Romish church”, he echoed Spenser’s analysis that they arose from the absence of the (Protestant) doctrine of salvation; so that their continued existence was due to the failure of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland.38 Irish folklore collecting on the European model can be said to have begun in earnest with the publication of Croker’s second work, Fairy Leg- ends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, which came out in 1825 to great acclaim, and was followed by a second volume in 1828.39 The first volume was translated into German by Jacob Grimm before the second volume had appeared. Grimm’s preface presents the material as emanating from “an ancient people” who, because they still spoke Gaelic, “must retain living traces of former times” [my emphasis]. Its attractions would be clear to “[w]hoever . . . has a relish for innocent and simple poetry”, and in an oblique reference to Ireland’s troubled recent history, he said that the legends stood in contrast to more usual and “not very pleasant” reports on the country.40 Croker included these quotations in the preface to his second volume, but he himself could not sustain this primitivist interpretation when it came to explaining and justifying his project. In a later edition put together after his death, his son quotes from one of the father’s letters recounting the field trip of 1825 to gather the fairy legends, where, using a hunting metaphor, he boasted of “bagging all the old ‘grey superstitions’ I could fall in with” amidst the dangers of White- boys (the popular name given to members of agrarian secret societies), smugglers and murderers.41 While this may well have been mere bragga- docio, in all his accounts of field work undertaken he tended to stress his

38 Croker, Researches, p. 167; Spenser, View, p. 61. 39 Richard Dorson called it “the first field collection along modern lines” (“Folklore Studies in England”, Journal of American Folklore 74, no. 294 (Oct.–Dec. 1961), p. 311 n. 13). 40 Jacob Grimm cited in Thomas Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, ed. Thomas Wright, with a memoir by Croker’s son ([1825–8] London: William Tegg, n.d. [?1859]), pp. xxviii–xxix. 41 Letter (n.d.) by Croker quoted in “Memoir” in Croker, Fairy Legends, pp. ix–x. 204 clare o’halloran outsider status, not in class, religious or linguistic terms, but rather in the even more fraught context of growing peasant political grievances. Thus, he later recorded the frisson of witnessing a man who had been flogged for Whiteboy activities singing “songs that were rebellious in the highest degree” at a large popular gathering on St John’s or midsummer eve in the mountains in West Cork in 1813.42 Even more strikingly, in that same preface where he recorded the primitivist-seeming musings of Jacob Grimm, he defended himself against the charge made against the first volume of Fairy Legends that the material was not genuine. He did this by quoting at length from reports of two recent gruesome murder trials where fairies were invoked by the accused and blamed for the crimes. These reports, he asserted, were “evidences of the popular superstitions of Ireland” and proved that he had neither invented them, nor “attempted to perpetu- ate a creed which has disappeared”. The risk that the elite collector in an Irish context ran of becoming implicated in the potentially subversive/seditious culture which he was recording comes across clearly here. The act of defence necessitated, in this case, Croker’s explicit recasting of his project of recording a valuable if dying culture to one of hastening its death: [M]y aim has been to bring the twilight tales of the peasantry before the view of the philosopher; as, if suffered to remain unnoticed, the latent belief then may long have lingered among the inhabitants of the wild mountain and lonesome glen, to retard the progress of their civilisation.43 This defensive argument is not repeated in his later works; presumably the continuing success of his folklore collections gave him greater confidence about his role. In addition he had become an established scholar in antiquarian circles in London, and was active in the Percy Society, which he had helped to set up, and which published editions of songs and ballads.44 However, in one of his later works, published in 1844, ten years before his death, his uneasiness about his role came to the fore again, and in particular his doubts about the suitability of his material for an English readership and the impression of Ireland that it might convey to them. He

42 Croker, Keen of the South of Ireland, pp. xix–xx. 43 Croker, Fairy Legend and Traditions, pp. xxix–xxx. On Croker’s use of material that stresses supernatural agency, see Ann Markey, “The Discovery of Irish Folklore”, New Hibernia Review, 10, no. 4 (2006), pp. 25–26. 44 Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–86 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 14, 19, 49–50. irish antiquaries and the discovery of the ‘folk’ 205 had put together a collection of caoine, or funeral laments, and this was published by the Percy Society as The Keen of the South of Ireland, with the subtitle “As illustrative of Irish political and domestic history, manners, music and superstitions”.45 Here again we see the political intruding on folkloric matters; as he explains in his introduction to these songs of loss that “private and political feeling are often strongly infused in these com- positions”. He cites, but does not include, two notorious and highly political examples from the eighteenth century, involving the priest Nicholas Sheehy, who was hanged as a Whiteboy leader, and Art O Laoghaire, a well- to-do Catholic who was killed by a Protestant in a quarrel which had its basis in one of the penal laws against Catholics. Discretion dictated that songs expressing political grievances were omitted as “so spirit-stirring, that I do not consider it prudent to print them under the sanction of the Council of the Percy Society”.46 In spite of this reluctance to foist political songs on his English readers, and a declaration that his “object is . . . not to write a political essay”, Cro- ker used the introduction to urge Englishmen to make themselves “better acquainted with [Irish] people . . . [so] as to be able to perceive that the Irish . . . have feelings much like those of other persons of other countries”.47 Thus, this collection of laments or caoine, which he described as “a vehicle for conveying the sentiments of the heart”, would seem to have been designed, in part at least, to encourage a more sympathetic appreciation on the part of English readers of historic Irish grievances against Britain.48 And yet, if this was the aim, then the epigraph on the title page conveyed the exact opposite message, for it was an extract from Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland, albeit one in which Spenser wrote favourably, if patronisingly, of Gaelic song as “skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry; yet . . . sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and comeliness to them”.49 This canvassing of Spenser’s View as late as the 1840s would suggest that old habits of thought were slow to die, and that the Spenserian ethnographic project, which had

45 Croker had first begun publishing examples of the caoine in 1830 (T. Crofton Croker, “Specimens of Irish Minstrelsy. No. 1 ‘Keens’ ”, Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country 1, no. 2 (Mar. 1830), pp. 191–202. 46 Croker, Keen of the South of Ireland, xxix–xxxvii. For a modern edition of the second of these, see Seán Ó Tuama (ed.) Caoineadh Art Uí Laoghaire (Dublin: An Clóchomhar Tta, 1961). 47 Croker, Keen of the South of Ireland, pp. xlv–vi. 48 Ibid., p. xlvii. 49 Spenser, View, p. 77. 206 clare o’halloran described Gaelic culture only in order to root it out, was still inflecting antiquarian and folkloric scholarship well into the nineteenth century. It might seem from this that Crofton Croker saw his project as having little to do with the promotion of a separate Irish nation and national identity, with that European-wide movement that Joep Leerssen has recently surveyed. Indeed, in his earlier works he did not use the term ‘nation’, but his political outlook changed from an unenthusiastic but pragmatic acceptance of the Union, discernible in his early collections in the 1820s, to passionate support for Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for the repeal of that act and the return of a separate Irish parliament under the crown, by the time of the publication of his collection, The Keen of the South of Ireland of 1844. “A nation’s voice cannot be stifled, nor can the strongest army that England ever mustered, subdue, in the mind, a conviction based on truth.”50 That this rhetorical claim about the voice of the nation prefaced a collection devoted to popular song, and yet was glossed by a title page reference to Spenser’s View, merely serves to underline the conflicted and ambivalent stance of the elite Protestant antiquarian folklorist in Ireland. In Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978), Peter Burke anat- omised the first elite folklore collectors in terms of their detachment from or identification with the ‘folk’, instancing Boswell and Johnson on the Scottish Highlanders as epitomising the former and Spanish aristocratic enthusiasm for donning the dress of the working classes of Madrid as the most visible sign of the latter.51 Irish collectors such as Croker, and before him the Protestant antiquaries of the late eighteenth century, could adopt neither strategy fully in presenting the fruits of their work. In their awareness of the colonial nature of Irish history and its troubled legacies, they could neither wholly romanticise nor wholeheartedly condemn a peasant society that was considered not only barbarous but subversive, and yet which lay at the heart of the Irish problem and its solution.

50 Croker, Keen of the South of Ireland, xlv–vi. On the development of Croker’s O’Connellite politics, see Hultin and Ober, “An O’Connellite in Whitehall”, pp. 77–86. 51 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 8. Narrating Scotland: Andrew Lang’s Fairy Book Collection, The Gold of Fairnilee, and ‘A Creelfull of Celtic Stories’

Sara M. Hines

Introduction In an article on the diffusion of folk and fairy tales, published in 1893, Andrew Lang wrote the following about folklore: “To have lost them if they are really lost, is, in my opinion, a characteristic misfortune of the English people. To have kept them, is a characteristic good fortune of the Scotch people”.1 Lang’s interest in folklore spanned his career and in addition to publishing numerous articles and books on the topic, he was involved in the leadership of the Folk-Lore Society, founded in 1878.2 Furthermore, he edited a collection of fairytales published between 1889–1910, known as the Fairy Books. Lang’s quotation, cited above, can be placed in the context of Cairns Craig’s assertion that “nationalism is always a value system” for it aptly defines Lang’s own approach to anthropology, as well as some of its inconsistencies.3 The quotation addresses the unquestioned assumption that nations have traditional stories and that these stories possess national characteristics. In addition to categorising the stories as either Scottish or English, Lang claimed that even the approach and behaviour towards such stories embody national connotations. For example, not only does Scotland possess distinct stories, but also the Scots have ‘characteristically’ managed to retain their stories. ‘Good fortune’, a common element in folklore, becomes uniquely Scottish, or at the very least not- English. Further, the distinction between ‘England’ and ‘Scotland’ is one, which is pertinent in the trajectory of Lang’s own life. Born in Scotland in 1844, Lang lived in London for most of his professional career. He could be considered an ‘Anglicized Scot’, but one who lived the contradictions

1 A. Lang, “Cinderella and the Diffusion of Tales,” Folklore 4 (1893), p. 429. 2 See R.M. Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History (London: Routledge, 1968) for further information on the early years of the Folk-Lore Society and what Dorson terms ‘The Great Team’ of Folklorists, of whom Andrew Lang was one. 3 C. Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (Edin- burgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1999), p. 10. 208 sara m. hines which Craig defines thus: “ ‘Anglicized Scots’ may be participants in Eng- lish culture, but that does not prevent them from also being participants in Scottish culture, and it does not mean that their works may have very different meanings in the two cultures”.4 While Lang’s quotation above seemingly contradicts his purported theories about the characteristics of folktales, reiterated throughout his professional career, it exemplifies an undercurrent of preoccupation with Scotland and the idea of ‘Scottish- ness’5 that permeates Lang’s writing. Throughout his writing, Lang utilises various mediums to incorporate and position Scotland: including the use of Scots language, direct addresses to readers (Scottish and English), and explicit and implicit allusions to Scotland. Susan Stewart’s description of narrative as “a structure of desire” illuminates Lang’s approach to Scotland.6 By examining Lang’s tendency to position himself, and his Scottish identity, within his writing, as exemplified in The Blue Fairy Book, The Gold of Fairnilee, “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories”, this chapter argues that Lang reflects desire, not as a longing for his own childhood home, but instead for the imagining of Scotland as the border of or parallel to the fairy realm. This neglected aspect of Lang’s writing may have been overlooked because of the sheer wealth and variety of his writing. During the course of his career, he wrote on a range of topics such as folklore, Joan of Arc, English literature, French ballads, Scottish history, mythology, angling, and poetry. On these subjects, and more, he wrote articles, books, and reviews, penned original poems and fairy tales, and published other works of fiction. While it is impossible to collect a complete bibliography of all of his writing, because many of his articles were published anonymously, his

4 Ibid., p. 29. 5 There is considerable literature on Scottish national identity and nationalism. The following reflect the different approaches to the subject by historians, sociologists, and literary critics: David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Nation (London: Routledge, 2001); Murray Pittock, Celtic Identity and the British Image (Manchester: Man- chester University Press, 1999); Murray Pittock, The Invention of Scotland: The Stuart Myth and the Scottish Identity, 1638 to the Present (London: Routledge, 1991); Murray Pittock, Scot- tish Nationality (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001); Alexander Murdoch with the assistance of Edward J. Cowan and Richard J. Finlay eds. The Scottish Nation: Identity and History: Essays in Honour of William Ferguson (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007); William Ferguson, The Identity of the Scottish Nation: An Historic Quest (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998); Dauvit Broun, R.J. Finlay and Michael Lynch eds, Image and Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland Through the Ages (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1998); and Eleanor Bell, Questioning Scotland: Literature, Nationalism, Postmodernism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 6 S. Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Col- lection (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p. ix. narrating scotland 209 known published texts number in the thousands. Douglas Young defined Lang’s versatility as itself a “Scottish quality”.7 Lang’s interest in Scotland never waned and throughout his career he wrote fictionalised biographies on Scottish historical figures, histories of and poetry about Scotland. Both Richard Dorson and Roger Lancelyn Green refer to the influence Lang’s childhood in the Scottish Borderlands had on his professional career. Dor- son claimed “Lang the Borderer displayed a filial interest in Anglo-Scots traditions”.8 Green begins his biography on Lang with a chapter titled “A Border Boyhood” and discusses “the romance of the Border and its associations”.9 Although written over sixty years ago, Green’s biography on Lang remains the most comprehensive and scholarly assessment of Lang’s life and career to date. By examining some of Lang’s works not primarily dedicated to Scottish topics, Lang’s recurrent tendency to imagine Scotland across a spectrum of his writing can be addressed. If, as Craig proposes, “nations are nothing more than narratives and . . . it is through the narrative arts that national identities are established, maintained and elaborated”,10 then Lang imagined Scotland throughout his texts. The Scotland he imagined may be distinct and separate from England, but it incorporated two Scotlands within the same landscape: the real and the fairy. That Lang’s work can be seen to display such a preoccupation with Scotland, and Scottish imaginative identity, is perhaps paradoxical, given the nature of his theoretical writings on story, myth, and anthropology. To reveal the nature of this paradox, this essay provides a brief account of Lang’s theories on universality, as defined in his texts on anthropology and in the prefaces to his Fairy Book collection. The section “Theories of Universality” details Lang’s theories as developed across his anthropological texts. It examines his debates with Max Müller on mythology and folklore, assertions of ‘two moods’ and the ‘nature’ of rationality, to establish the primacy Lang placed on universality across human history. Dorson noted the contradiction between Lang’s theories of universality and his occasional references to national traditions,11 an idea developed in the final section. Contradictions certainly do exist in both the preface and the tales from The Blue Fairy Book, and “Narrating

7 D. Young, Andrew Lang: A Tribute by Douglas Young on the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Death. Radio, September 19, 1962. MS 38257 St. Andrews University, p. 7. 8 Dorson, The British Folklorists, p. 205. 9 R.L. Green, Andrew Lang: A Critical Biography with a Short-Title Bibliography of the Works of Andrew Lang (Leicester: E. Ward, 1946.), p. 7. 10 Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel, p. 10. 11 Dorson, The British Folklorists, p. 217. 210 sara m. hines

Scotland” provides a closer analysis of that volume, by exploring Lang’s approach to the Scottish material included in the volume. Through language and placement, Lang positioned the Scottish stories as unique and distinct from the remainder of the volume. Furthermore, evidence in other texts, such as The Gold of Fairnilee (1888), “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories” (1898), along with Lang’s introductions to Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott’s collections, continue to reinforce his tendency to narrate a desire for Scotland in his writing. Due to the importance of the Fairy Books in his career, the essay provides background information on the collection, including debates surrounding its relevance as folkloric material.

The Fairy Books Longmans, Green and Co. published the first volume of the Fairy Books, The Blue Fairy Book, in 1889. The Red Fairy Book followed in 1890 and The Green Fairy Book, published two years later, included a comment in the preface that it was expected to be the “The third, and probably the last, of the Fairy Books of many colours”.12 The series, however, continued until 1910 totalling twelve volumes. Lang was credited as the editor of each volume, but was adamant in the prefaces he wrote that he was not the ‘author’ of the stories included. The preface to The Violet Fairy Book states: The Editor takes this opportunity to repeat what he has often said before, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them “out of his own head.” He is accustomed to being asked, by ladies “Have you written anything else except the Fairy Books?” He is obliged to explain that he has not written the Fairy Books, but, save these, he has written almost everything else, except hymns, sermons, and dramatic works.13 This sentiment is echoed in prefaces to other volumes in the series. Lang was not a field collector and most of the stories included in his books were not culled from oral sources. Instead, they were translated from other written sources and many of them were translations of translations. “The Witch in the Stone Boat”, for example, was translated directly from the Icelandic, while “Urashimatoro and the Turtle” was translated from the German book Japanische Märchen und Sagen. Approximately twenty- five people, including Lang’s wife, assisted with the translations during

12 A. Lang, The Green Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, 1892), p. ix. 13 A. Lang, The Violet Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1901), p. vii. narrating scotland 211 the course of the project and Lang’s exact contributions are debatable. However, as he is credited on each volume as the editor, for the purposes of this essay, it is assumed that he retained editorial privileges over the publications. Although Lang was an active member of the Folk-Lore Society, the group dismissed and ignored the Fairy Book collection during the twenty years in which the books were published.14 In his 1894 Presidential Address, Lawrence Gomme censured the Fairy Books as not being true representations of folklore.15 Lang used the preface to The Yellow Fairy Book as a platform for his response later that same year and wrote: If children are pleased, and they are so kind as to say that they are pleased, the Editor does not care very much for what other people may say. Now, there is one gentleman who seems to think that it is not quite right to print so many fairy tales, with pictures, and to publish them in red and blue covers. He is named Mr. G. Laurence Gomme and he is president of a learned body called the Folk-Lore Society. Once a year he makes his address to his subjects . . . Fancy, then, the dismay . . . of the Editor, when [he] heard [the] president say that he did not think it very nice . . . to publish fairy books . . . Where is the harm? The truth is that the Folk Lore Society— made up of the most clever, learned, and beautiful men and women of the country—is fond of studying the history and geography of Fairy Land . . . These people are thought to know most about fairyland and its inhabitants. But, in the Yellow Fairy Book, and the rest, are many tales by persons who are neither savages nor rustics, such as Madame D’Aulnoy and Herr Hans Chris- tian Andersen. The Folk Lore Society, or its president, say that their tales are not so true as the rest, and should not be published with the rest. But we say that all the stories which are pleasant to read are quite true enough for us . . .16 It becomes clear that for the publication of the Fairy Books Lang was less fastidious than many of his contemporaries about the ‘science’ of folklore and fairy tales. Included in the collection are many stories, which other folklorists might catalogue as ‘animal stories’, ‘saint’s legends’, ‘cautionary tales’, and ‘myths’. Lang, however, categorised them together under the label ‘fairy stories’, thus capitalising on their similarities rather than their distinctions, which explains another reason for Gomme’s

14 I have found no other reference or reviews to any of the Fairy Books in the Folk Lore Journal during the years of the series’ publication. 15 G.L. Gomme, “Presidential Address”, Folklore 5 (1894), p. 63. 16 A. Lang, The Yellow Fairy Book (London: Longmans, 1894), pp. ix–x. 212 sara m. hines dismissal. The collection may also have been ignored by the Society due to the books’ popular appeal. After an initial print run of 5000, the first volume went into reprint twice during its first year. Every subsequent volume had an initial print run of approximately 10,000.

Lang’s Theories of Universality Lang’s theories of universality are expressed most prominently in his anthropological writing. While a student at Oxford, Lang became acquainted with the works of Edward Burnett Tylor. Tylor’s concept of ‘survivals’ influenced Lang’s own theories, and although they occasionally disagreed with each other’s ideas, they communicated throughout Lang’s career. After leaving Oxford, Lang had no official connection to any academic institution, but he continued to publish articles and books on current debates in anthropology and, according to Dorson, was instrumental in bringing about the “eclipse of Solar Mythology” in an extensive debate with Max Müller, another contemporary Oxford scholar.17 Lang’s first contribution to the debate was the article “Mythology and Fairy Tales”, which directly disputed Müller’s theories of mythology. “The object of this essay”, Lang stated, “is to demonstrate that the very opposite of Mr. Müller’s view is the true one, namely that the Märchen, far from being the detritus of the higher mythology, are the remains of an earlier formation, and that in most cases in which they tally with the higher epic, they preserve an older and more savage form of the same myth”.18 Müller subscribed to the theory that myths were degenerative—they began as a unique whole and have been distorted over generations of retelling. Lang, in contrast, argued that mythology evolved from folktales, or conversely, that generic folktales precede location and name specific mythology. On Lang’s side, the debate continued in Custom and Myth (1884), Modern Mythology (1897), The Mak- ing of Religion (1898), Myth, Ritual and Religion (1899), and Magic and Reli- gion (1901), where he concentrated on systematically identifying what he perceived were the deficiencies in his contemporaries’ theories, especially those of Müller and James Frazer. It is outside the scope of this essay to provide extensive detail about these debates; however, it is necessary to give a short précis of the theories that emerge from Lang’s writing.

17 R.M. Dorson, “The Eclipse of Solar Mythology”, The Journal of American Folklore 6 (1955), p. 393. 18 A. Lang, “Mythology and Fairy Tales”, Fortnightly Review XIII (1873), p. 620. narrating scotland 213

In Myth, Ritual and Religion Lang discussed a concept he defined as two moods, which “are present, and in conflict, through the whole religious history of the human race”.19 With this argument, Lang demonstrated his fundamental perspective on humanity and established two very significant assumptions: the dual nature of humans and the unifying notion of this dual nature in all people, regardless of time or location. According to Lang’s assessment, within every person exists a dynamic conflict between these two moods identified in opposition as solemn and playful, submis- sive and erratic, contemplative and free spirited. An individual is no longer a unified whole, then, but a dialogue between two opposing forces. Lang maintained that the two moods exist throughout the entirety of human history. His assumption essentially divided the individual; therefore, what ultimately united humanity is a division within the self. Custom and Myth further explained this commonality, a theme to which Lang continually returned. In Custom and Myth, Lang set out to determine the meaning behind some of the unusual elements in myths and folk tales, concentrating on elements that seem to have little meaning or were nonsense to the nineteenth-century mind—like talking animals and the personification of natural elements. Max Müller identified this phenomenon as a “disease of language”, but Lang instead looked for an explanation based in thought and reason. According to Lang, the method of folklore, was: to compare the seemingly meaningless customs of manners of civilised races with the similar customs and manners which exist among the uncivilised and still retain their meaning. It is not necessary for comparison of this sort that the uncivilised and the civilised race should be of the same stock, nor need we prove that they were ever in contact with each other. Similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart from identity of race, or borrowing of ideas and manners.20 Lang claimed that even some of the most unusual elements of myths and folk tales had some meaning at one point. He constantly reiterated the assumption, although his own society could not understand certain aspects of a tale, it did not signify that they held no meaning for the people who first told them. Rather, he adhered firmly to the assumption that “man is never irrational”.21 This hypothesis also explains the final sentence

19 A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, New ed. 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1899), p. 5. 20 A. Lang, Custom and Myth (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1884), pp. 21–22. 21 A. Lang and J.J. Atkinson, Social Origins (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1903), p. 141. 214 sara m. hines of the quotation above, that it was possible for different groups of people, separated by time and space, to develop a similar story. To say that “similar conditions of mind produce similar practices” refers back to the assumption expounded in Myth, Ritual and Religion, which is that there was a unifying aspect of human intellect regardless of age or location. Furthermore, many of Lang’s arguments rested on an underlying assumption of “what makes sense”. He argued this point explicitly in “The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs”. Discussing the concept of totemism, which became a recurring theme in some of his later writings, he stated: Meanwhile let us keep one point steadily before our minds. Totemism, at a first glance, seems a perfectly crazy and irrational set of beliefs, and we might think, with Dr. Johnson, that there is no use in looking for reason among the freaks of irrational people. But man is never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in congruity with his limited knowledge of facts and with his theory of the universe.22 Lang was consistent in his assertion that humans across time and space were rational. He continually admonished his contemporaries against judging one age by their own, and yet, simultaneously he contended that all humans ultimately act in a ‘rational’ manner, even if their actions may not seem ‘rational’ to his late-Victorian society. Lang, living in his post- Enlightenment world, assumed that all people were rational, but he also allowed what constitutes rationality to fluctuate. When reading a myth or fairy tale and encountering an episode that does not make sense—a person marrying an animal or trees that speak—rather than assuming, as Max Müller did, that people misunderstood the story and mistook what had originally been metaphor for a description of reality, Lang instead questioned whether there might have been societies in which these seemingly fantastic incidents did make sense. Lang continually reminded the readers of his scholarly books, as well in articles he submitted to the Folk- Lore Journal, that fairy tales contain universal elements and that their resemblance demonstrates the parallels amongst varied peoples. The prefaces to each of the volumes of the Fairy Book collection reinforce the theory of universality. In the preface of The Blue Fairy Book, Lang wrote, “Even a child [this preface is not meant for children] must recognise, as he turns the pages of the Blue Fairy Book, that the same

22 A. Lang, “The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs”, Folklore 13 (1902), p. 357. narrating scotland 215 adventures and something like the same plots meet him in stories translated from different languages”.23 Other volumes reiterate the same ideas as Lang repeatedly used the prefaces as a platform to reinforce his theories. Phrases such as “All people in the world” (1897), “grandmothers in many climes” (1903), “all quarters of the world” (1904), and “However much these nations differ about trifles, they all agree in liking fairy tales” (1892) reinforce the same assumption of universality present in The Blue Fairy Book preface. Ann McKinnell, in her discussion on Lang’s Fairy Book collection, pri- oritises its literary merit as opposed to its contribution to folklore. Rather than focusing on a few stories and ignoring ones that do not seem to fit, as had been done by previous scholars, McKinnell argues that by examining Lang’s collection in its entirety we can see that it does reflect Lang’s theories about fairy tales. For example, The Blue Fairy Book, in addition to including many of the best-known fairy tales from the collections of Charles Perrault, the Grimm Brothers, and Norwegian stories from Asb- jørnsen and Möe, also contains literary tales from Madame d’Aulnoy and an abridged retelling of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. McKinnell claims that rather than being an arbitrary inclusion, by including Gul- liver’s Travels, Lang “also hopes to blur the distinctions among the genre and type of his collection of stories, especially in The Blue Fairy Book”.24 McKinnell further maintains that, “In ‘standardizing’ his stories in this manner, Lang hopes in his coloured fairy books to diminish his reader’s sense of the differences among the tales of disparate races, differences that he believes are often negligible”.25 In many ways she is correct. Sev- eral of the stories in the books echo similar themes and some are almost direct repeats of each other. For example, variations of the Kind/Unkind Girls story (ATU480) show up in no less than twelve variations throughout the collection. In some cases stories in earlier books are repeated almost verbatim—under alternate titles and derived from different sources— in later volumes. The tales and the prefaces then mirror each other. The volumes contain varied international tales, but they have similar motifs. Lang capitalised on theories of universality in the prefaces, and the stories provided the evidence that support his claims.

23 A. Lang, The Blue Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, 1889), p. xi. 24 A.L. McKinnell, “Andrew Lang: Anthropologist, Classicist, Folklorist and Victorian Critic”. MA thesis, University of Toronto, 1992, p. 85. 25 Ibid., p. 85. 216 sara m. hines

Narrating Scotland In an article on French folklore published in the first volume of the Folk- Lore Record, Lang betrayed a contradictory opinion by proposing, “The folk-lore of a nation comprehends all the ‘culture’ if the term may be used, that the people has created out of its own resources”.26 He concluded with the comment that in French ballads, “One misses the pleasant spontaneity and good nature of the Norse legends, the intensity of the Scotch ballad, the poetry of Celtic stories”.27 It is about this article that Dorson commented: “This foray into national traditions runs strangely counter to his ‘damnable iteration’ of the universal traits in folktales”.28 It is precisely this cultural specificity, especially as regards the ‘intensity’ of Scottish stories, which emerges from a closer analysis of the Fairy Book collection, The Gold of Fairnilee, “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories” and other writings. In the preface to The Blue Fairy Book—the same volume that includes the quotation from above indicating that even children will recognise the similarity and universality of the tales—Lang concluded with the comment “the Scotch stories are placed at the end for Scotch children”.29 After The Blue Fairy Book, Lang did not include any Scottish stories until the twelfth and final volume, The Lilac Fairy Book (1910), in which eight of the thirty-eight stories, nearly a quarter of the book, were identified as “West Highland Tales” from J.F. Campbell’s collection, Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860–1862). The two Scottish stories—“The Black Bull of Norroway” and “The Red Etin”—in The Blue Fairy Book were taken from Robert Chambers’ Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1826), although their source in The Blue Fairy Book is incorrectly identified as “Chambers, Popu- lar Traditions of Scotland”. Lang justified his inclusion of the two stories by writing “The Etin and the Bull are such very old friends of the editor’s that he could not omit them when the fairies were invited to the festival”.30 Within the same preface, then, Lang directly contradicted himself simultaneously representing the stories as common and universal, while also signalling that the two stories from his own Scottish heritage are distinct from the other tales included. The contradiction becomes even more apparent upon analysis of the two stories.

26 A. Lang, “The Folk-Lore of France”, The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), p. 99. 27 Ibid., p. 117. 28 Dorson, The British Folklorists, p. 217. 29 Lang, The Blue Fairy Book, p. xxi. 30 Ibid., p. xxi. narrating scotland 217

“The Black Bull of Norroway” and “The Red Etin” are the only two stories in any of the twelve volumes to be printed in dialect, or non-standardised English. “The Black Bull of Norroway” begins: In Norroway, langsyne, there lived a certain lady, and she had three dochters. The auldest o’ them said to her mither: “Mither, bake me a bannock, and roast me a collop, for I’m gaun awa’ to seek my fortune”.31 Similarly, “The Red Etin” opens with the following: There were once twa widows that lived on a small bit o’ ground, which they rented from a farmer. Ane of them had twa sons, and the other had ane; and by-and-by it was time for the wife that had twa sons to send them away to seek their fortune.32 Both stories contain familiar motifs and resonate with other fairy tale introductions. “The Black Bull of Norroway” includes tests of character, three pieces of fruit containing jewellery, and a third daughter who ultimately defeats the false bride and marries happily. Likewise, “The Red Etin” contains three boys, the third of whom accepts his mother’s blessing, generously shares food with a helper, defeats the Red Etin of Ireland and marries a princess from Scotland. Therefore, it is not the plot or motifs of the stories that distinguish them from other fairy tales. Although “The Red Etin” references Scotland, neither tale locates itself in Scotland. The Blue Fairy Book contains 35 other stories, which were edited and/ or translated into standardised English. This volume was not the first time many of these stories appeared in English. The Grimm tales, for example, had been translated into English over 65 years before. Furthermore, the volume contains tales such as “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “The Brave Little Tailor”, and “Aladdin” which would have been familiar. Within the collection, only “The Black Bull of Norroway” and “The Red Etin” would be perceived as ‘translations’ to an English readership. To place the Scottish stories at the end of the book, after all the familiar tales, accentuated their difference. Through the use of language and the editorial arrangement of the stories, the two Scottish stories, as opposed to any other tales in the volume, retain the position of other, or foreignness. Lang addressed the issue of language in the Introduction to The Blue Fairy Book, and commented that “If English people ‘hate dialect’ so much

31 Ibid., p. 380. 32 Ibid., p. 385. 218 sara m. hines that they cannot read the Waverley novels and Burns, English children (if inordinately and not merely affectedly stupid) may be puzzled by ‘The Black Bull of Norroway’ and ‘The Red Etin’ ”.33 There was no pretence of universality in this quotation; Lang was clearly accentuating the differences between his English and Scottish audiences. ‘Scottishness’ was not only distinguished, but also privileged within the preface; it was, however, specifically separated from, and privileged against, ‘Englishness’. Craig offers language as one device for distinguishing between the two cultures: “From the perspective of English speakers and English culture, Scots is a language of leftovers, the detritus of proper speech and good writing, a supplement poisonous to the health of the real language of its society”.34 For Lang, language is the primary marker of cultural difference: while other references to Scotland are apparent in an illustration from “The Red Etin”—the hero of the tale engages the Etin wearing a kilt, hose, and other components of highland dress—the text only contains two small illustrations whereas the use of Scots is maintained throughout. ‘Scottish- ness’, therefore, became primarily identifiable through the use of language and dialect, albeit reinforced in other cultural allusions. However, Lang inverted Craig’s notion of position and instead valued Scottish language, while simultaneously challenging English intelligence. Lang reinforced his position on Scottish language in his introductions to editions of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Continuing to identify Scottish culture through language, in an introduction to the Selected Poems of Robert Burns, he stipulated, “To English students, Robert Burns is, and must be, a foreign classic”.35 In the same Introduction, he claimed “A little pains, a little acuteness, and the use of a Scottish dictionary, clear up these difficulties, but many persons are so indolent that they will rather take Burns for granted than busy themselves to understand him”.36 Whether comments of this type were meant to chastise an English audience, or were for the benefit of a Scottish one, it becomes apparent that Lang was separating the two possible audiences and the distinguishing characteristic, in this text, was language. In addition, the quotation not only distinguishes Scots from English, but also legitimises it. Burns’ language was not a variant of English, or the “detritus of proper speech” but

33 Ibid., p. xxi. 34 Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel, p. 76. 35 A. Lang, introduction to Selected Poems of Robert Burns, by Robert Burns (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trèubner, 1896), pp. xi–l. 36 Ibid., p. xii. narrating scotland 219 a ‘foreign’ language, wholly other than English. In terms of language, Lang again demonstrated his opinion on dialect in the introduction to Scott’s Waverley, “Even at first, English readers complained of the difficulty caused by his Scotch, and how many make his ‘dialect’ an excuse for not reading books which their taste, debauched by third-rate fiction, is incapable of enjoying”.37 Gerald Porter recognises the significance of language in the construction of both Scotland and England during the seventeenth century, and maintains “Language is featured as a marker of Scottish national identity in eight out of ten broadsides with Scottish themes”.38 Language, then, became a defining feature of Scottish identity, and Lang, two centuries later, used the same device that Porter ascribes to the seventeenth century to emphasise the singularity of the Scottish stories included in The Blue Fairy Book. Introductions to Burns and Scott certainly maintained differing agendas than Lang’s writings on fairy tales and anthropology. Nonetheless, identification of a Scottish language, as separate from Eng- lish, was a common feature across several of Lang’s works. Lang continued to narrate Scotland in one of his own authored fairy tales. The Gold of Fairnilee, is a rewriting of the Scottish border ballad “Tam Lin” or “Young Tamlane”. The story incorporates intertextual references to Scotland on multiple levels: geography, language, allusions to other traditional tales, and the Scottish fairy genre. The story includes mention of specific geographical locations—the Tweed, Yair, Ettrick, and Yarrow—to firmly root its location within Scotland. Jean, the character who fills the role of “Janet”, is a young English child accidentally taken by the Scots in one of the border raids. She is raised by a Scottish family alongside Randal, representing “Tamlin”. This story contains a mixture of standardised English and Scottish dialect translated or explained within the text in recognisable English. For example, when Randal’s nurse gos- sips to the other maids, “ ‘He’s an unco’ bairn, oor Randal; I wush he may na be fey’ ” the narrator immediately follows with “She meant that Ran- dal was a strange child, and that strange things would happen”.39 Later a character tells Randal’s mother “ ‘Sae we drave oor ain kye hame, my lady . . . and aiblins some orra anes that was na oor ain. For-bye we raikit a’

37 A. Lang, introduction to Waverley: Or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since, by Walter Scott (New York: The Heritage Press, 1961), pp. v–xx. 38 G. Porter, “ ‘Who Talks of My Nation?’ The Role of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in Constructing Englishness”, in Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter, eds, Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures (Logan: Utah State Univ. Press, 2001), p. 117. 39 A. Lang, The Gold of Fairnilee (Bristol: J.W. Arrowsmith, 1888), p. 9. 220 sara m. hines the plenishing oot o’ the ha’ o’ Hardring, and a bonny burden o’ tapestries, and plaids, and gear we hae, to show for our ride”, which is followed by an asterisk and footnote translation at the bottom of the page. The narrative also incorporates Scottish phrases, occasionally in italics, that are either explained within the text or in a footnote. The language positions the characters as different, foreign, from an English readership. In addition to language, The Gold of Fairnilee also incorporates other elements of Scottish culture. Unlike the previous texts discussed, it contains illustrations throughout. Itself a revision of the ballad “Tam Lin”, The Gold of Fairnilee also draws heavily on other traditional Scottish tales. According to Eric Montenyol, the story is “heavily embedded with Bor- der folklore” and identifies in the nurse’s stories “references to Whuppity Stoorie, the Red Bull of Etin, beliefs in fairy cattle and Brownies, as well as the numerous stories and allusions to the fairies—all written about by collectors of Scottish folklore, including Lang”.40 Montenyol recognises several intertextual references to Scottish tales; however, Roger Lancelyn Green interprets not just the references but also the narrative style as an intertextual comment on Scottish fairy tale tradition. Green argues that in The Gold of Fairnilee Lang breaks away from every literary tradition from Shakespeare downwards, away even from the genuine folk-tale of Grimm or Dasent, and returns to the gloomy horrors of the Scottish Fairyland, going direct to the ballads of “Tamlane” and “Thomas the Rhymer” for his machinery. His fairies are the dark, subterranean people of Northern superstitions.41 Through illustration, direct mention of Scotland’s landscape, the incorporation of Scottish language, allusions to Scottish stories and folk-belief, along with the style and characterisation following Scottish rather than English fairy tradition, Lang infused one of the few fairy tales that he authored with Scottishness. Lang himself was not a field collector, but he published one article titled “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories”, which described a holiday he took in Ireland and Scotland where he attempted to collect oral stories. The article begins:

40 E.L. Montenyohl, “Andrew Lang and the Fairy Tale”, Doctoral thesis, Indiana Univer- sity, 1987, pp. 177 and 108. 41 R.L. Green, “Andrew Lang and the Fairy Tale”, Review of English Studies: A Quarterly Journal of English Literature and the English Language 20 (1944), p. 228. narrating scotland 221

In the holidays of 1898 there was no water, for fishing purposes, in the districts of Ireland and the Highlands where I happened to be. I was reduced, therefore, to angling for legends among the country people, and some of my captures I here display.42 If, as Marina Warner suggests, “Lang was working to rekindle this legacy of Celtic legend and fairy in Scotland”,43 then “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories” provides evidence for her claim as Lang makes several references to Celtic traditions. Lang’s preference for the past is not unusual according to Craig’s estimation of nineteenth-century Scottish literature. In Out of History, Craig turns to nineteenth-century Scottish texts on myth, fantasy, and fairy tale as evidence for his claim that in Scottish writing after Scott, “ ‘realism’ is displaced by ‘romance’ ”.44 Lang undoubtedly conformed to Craig’s assertion in his article “Realism and Romance” in which he argued that while each has its place, “if there is to be no modus vivendi, if the battle between the crocodile of Realism and the catawampus of Romance is to be fought out to the bitter end—why, in that Ragnarôk, I am on the side of the catawampus”.45 “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories”, although a non- fiction account of his own attempts to collect fictional stories, stated “But this is a Celtic secret, involving members of a loyal and stainless clan”.46 Such comments align Scotland with the Celtic tradition, drawing more on its romance of the ancient past than the realism of its present inclusion in Britain. “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories” further reinforced the fundamental function of fairies in Scottish popular belief. Of one of his informants, Lang wrote, “If Phelim had been pressed for a theory, he would, perhaps have fallen back on the fairies. They were the heart and substance of his beliefs”.47 Corresponding to Green’s assertion, Lang did define fairies as distinct from the Shakespearean tradition: “The central belief is that the fairies are a ‘secret commonwealth’ as Rev. Robert Kirk wrote two hundred years ago. The fairies are somewhat akin to mortals, merely another set of earth’s inhabitants, and we may one day migrate into their adjacent realms”.48 In his preface to Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth, Lang

42 A. Lang, “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories”, Blackwood’s Magazine (1898), p. 792. 43 M. Warner, “Introduction”, to The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, by Robert Kirk (New York: New York Review Books, 2007), p. xxxii. 44 Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel, p. 40. 45 A. Lang, “Realism and Romance”, Contemporary Review 52 (1887), p. 693. 46 Lang, “A Creelful of Celtic Stories”, p. 797. 47 Ibid., p. 795. 48 Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, & Fairies (London: David Nutt, 1893), p. 795. 222 sara m. hines stated “In short, though a memory of some old race may have mingled in the composite Fairy belief, this is at most but an element in the whole, and the part played by ancestral spirits, naturally earth dwellers is probably more important”.49 By alluding to Kirk, Lang drew on Scottish tradition that fairies’ “lives paralleled those of humans, whom they resembled in size and appearance”.50 Such beliefs exist in Scottish border ballads such as “Thomas the Rhymer” and “Tam Lin”. Lang disputed any claims that belief in the fairies is the result of an older people, but instead focused on the “ancestral spirits” and “natural earth dwellers”, demonstrating the relationship between fairies and the land. The same connection between fairies and the landscape is evident in The Gold of Fairnilee. Randal and Jean’s nurse orates stories about the fairies. “Everyone knows there’s fairies,” said the old nurse one night when she was bolder than usual. What she said we will put in English, not Scotch as she spoke it. “But they do not like to be called fairies.” So the old rhyme runs: If ye call me imp or elf, I warn you look well to yourself; If ye call me fairy, Ye’ll find me quite contrary; If good neibour you call me, Then good neighbour I will be; But if you call me kindly sprite, I’ll be your friend both day and night.51 The nurse confirms that the “Good Folk” are truly “neighbours” as “their own country” is “under the ground”.52 Randal disappears when climbing with Jean between the Tweed and the Yarrow; “He had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed him”.53 The story further defines the fairy realm as “within” Scotland: At every Fairy Knowe, as the country people called the little round green knolls in the midst of the heather, Jean would stoop her ear to the ground, trying to hear the voices of the fairies within. For it was believed that you might hear the sound of their speech, and the trampling of their horses, and

49 A. Lang, preface to Ibid., p. xxi. 50 Lizanne Henderson and Edward Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001), pp. 17–18. 51 A. Lang, The Gold of Fairnilee (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1888), p. 25. 52 Ibid., p. 26. 53 Ibid., p. 43. narrating scotland 223

the shouts of the fairy children. But no sound came, except the song of the burn flowing by, and the hum of gnats in the air, and the gock, gock, the cry of the grouse, when you frighten him in the heather.54 Both The Gold of Fairnilee and “A Creelfull of Celtic Stories” narrate a fairy realm coexistent and parallel to Scotland; fairies are connected to land, they are not other, or outside, but are instead found within, literally embedded within the landscape. Not simply Scottish, fairies are Scotland. Warner also recognises Lang’s connection to a Scottish tradition, capitalising on both the Scottish literary and folkloric tradition. In her own introduction to an edition of Robert Kirk’s book, she discusses Lang’s introduction to the same volume: When Lang edited The Secret Commonwealth for his handsome edition in 1893, he dedicated it to Robert Louis Stevenson, the most accomplished teller of uncanny tales in the Scottish tradition of faery, who pays homage to Hogg in his famous tale of hauntings and doubles, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Lang connected himself to these national adepts of the uncanny, adding a valedictory poem that pictures Stevenson sadly exiled in his tomb far from the land of kelpies, banshees, and ghasts. Lang thus places himself in an enchanted lineage that runs back via Stevenson to Kirk, and, by this date, envies the Fairy Minister his legendary fate.55 Lang, then, not only appreciated Scottish literary and fairy tradition, he also positioned himself within that tradition. Lang’s regard for Scotland’s literary tradition is recognisable in his introductions to Sir Walter Scott’s novels and collections. Lang said of Scott “Scottish memories, all the hot-blooded past of the race these were to be, his topics” and “So potent was his genius, so inspiring the martial tramp and clang of his measures, that he made the new world listen to the accents of the old”.56 During Lang’s lifetime, Scott’s collection The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) came under criticism for lack of authenticity. Lang published a rejoinder to such claims in 1910, titled Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy. Lang had an exceptionally high opinion of Scott. Com- ments such as “nobody perhaps in any age, had Scott’s moral qualities,

54 Ibid., p. 45. 55 Warner, “Introduction”, pp. xxx–xxxi. 56 A. Lang, “Introduction” to The Lyrics and Ballads of Sir Walter Scott, by Walter Scott. (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1894), pp. xxii and xxiv. 224 sara m. hines any more than they had his genius” require no further explanation.57 As Eric Sharpe claims, “The study of Lang begins with Scott. Lang’s allegiance to Scott never wavered”58 and so Lang’s defence of Scott’s ballad collection methodology became one of personal significance. Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy corresponded stylistically with most of Lang’s other scholarly works. Scott had been accused of authoring a ballad proposed to have been collected from an oral source. In the preface, Lang stipulated that, for him, the debate was “ ‘about’ the veracity of Sir Walter Scott” and “If we are interested in truth about the matter, we ought at least to read the very accessible material before bringing charges against the Sheriff and the Shepherd of Ettrick”.59 The entirety of Lang’s book consisted of close analysis of various pieces of evidence to prove the claim incorrect. According to Dorson’s analysis of the debate, “Scottish blood prevailed over the scientific temper when he edited Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy (1910) and defended Sir Walter’s loose editorial methods”.60 Whether or not Lang’s assessment of Scott’s methods was accurate, Dorson’s assessment of “Scottish blood” prevailing certainly has foundation. Even when ostensibly promoting the idea of universal connections among all peoples, Lang included occasional references to Scotland. In The Making of Religion he asserted a connection between Scott and Immanuel Kant: A Scot himself, by descent, Kant may have heard tales of second-sight and bogles. Like Scott, he dearly loved a ghost-story; like Scott was canny enough to laugh, publicly, at them and at himself for his interest in them. Yet both would take trouble to inquire.61 Again in Magic and Religion he wrote: It is not every inquirer who has the power of eliciting beliefs which, for many reasons, are jealously guarded. Many Englishmen or Lowlanders are unable to extract legends of fairies, ghosts, and second-sight from Gaelic

57 A. Lang, “Introduction” to The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, by Walter Scott vol. 1. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1895), p. viii. 58 E.J. Sharpe, “Andrew Lang and the Making of Myth”, in Nils G. Holm, ed., Ethnogra- phy Is a Heavy Rite: Studies of Comparative Religion in Honor of Juha Pentikäinen (Turku: Akademi Univ. Press, 2000), p. 54. 59 A. Lang, Sir Walter and the Border Minstrelsy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910), p. v. 60 Dorson, The British Folklorists, p. 219. 61 A. Lang, The Making of Religion (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1898), p. 29. narrating scotland 225

Highlanders. On the other hand, they are kind enough to communicate to me plenty of their folk-tales.62 In this last quotation, not only did Lang continue to imagine a narrative about Scotland, but he also positioned himself within that narrative. As someone “not English”, he is capable of eliciting stories from fellow Scots. Lang, of course, was a ‘Lowlander’, not a ‘Highlander’; his connection, then, was constructed as partially national but also distinguished himself as an inquirer. Lang not only imagined Scotland as a place that possessed legends, but he also narrated himself into the story as uniquely able to collect those legends. Lang, in the introduction to Sir Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel, wrote: From this cliff you see all of the country which Scott made so famous: the three purple peaks of Eildon Hill, haunted by the Fairy Queen; the ruined abbey of Dryburgh . . . Melrose and its abbey; the plain where English and Scots had fought so many battles; in the south the blue Cheviot Hills, with England on the farther side; in the north the hills of Yarrow and Ettrick.63 From this cliff, Lang was clearly less interested in universal similarities, than in admiring Scotland. The position offered an opportunity to gaze on Scotland, which became the sum of landscape, in the “three purple peaks”; ancient history, through the “ruined abbey”; decidedly anterior to England, from the reference to English and Scottish battles; and Fairy, in the allusion of the “Fairy Queen”. The borderlands of his childhood positioned Scotland and England as opposing each other, while the Scot- land and the Fairy realm existed parallel to each other. Scotland haunted Lang’s writings, not the real, historical Scotland of his childhood, but the romantic, fairy realm, which both borders on and exists within the same Scottish landscape.

62 A. Lang, Magic and Religion (London: Longmans Green and Co., 1901), p. 58. 63 A. Lang, “Introduction”, to The Lay of the Last Minstrel, by Walter Scott (London: Carmelite Classics, 1905), p. vi.

England—The Land without Folklore?1

Jonathan Roper

With the “German Popular Stories” translated from Grimm’s inestimable little volumes . . . we must close our list of English works on the subject of Legendary Lore. Not one of them, alas! dedicated to the preservation of the Legends of our “Father Land.”2 These words of William Thoms at the beginning of the Victorian era can be seen standing at the beginning of a tradition—a tradition of complaint about the lack of attention paid to English vernacular culture and folklore. This lament has continued to be sounded throughout the subsequent century and three-quarters, and is still to be heard today. Thoms voices this lament immediately after listing works on “legendary lore” in (or translated into) English, a list which includes the publications of Scott, Price, Keightley, and Grimm. In other words, those writing on folklore up to his day had turned their attentions to Scandinavia, Germany, and the Celtic nations of the British Isles, rather than to England. This focus has also remained essentially the same in the intervening years. Latterly, the traditional complaint of lack of attention paid to folklore has merged with and morphed into the somewhat different complaint (and, in some hands, accusation) that England lacks folklore. One expression of this is found in Neil Philip’s judgement: “Of all the major folk literatures, that of England is probably the scantiest.”3 Philip is well-placed to make such a judgement given his editorial work on a variety of national and international collections of folk narrative. In the “Introduction” to his collection of English stories, he chasteningly notes that even the mere handful of folktales (four to be precise) that “the leading authority of his day, could come up with in

1 This research was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence CECT). 2 William Thoms, Lays and Legends of Various Countries: Germany (London: G. Cowie, 1834), p. viii. 3 Neil Philip, The Penguin Book of English Folktales (London: Penguin, 1992), p. xiii. 228 jonathan roper

1890 as ‘English folktales that have been taken down from the lips of the people’ ”, were really no such thing.4 Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud who, a century and a half after Thoms’ lament, were the first authors to take England “as the basis for a book covering all folklore genres”, have suggested that the two complaint traditions are intimately related in a chicken-and-egg manner, that the lack of interest in English folklore has led to the lack of its documentation, revival or valorisation, further deepening its neglect: there has always been great stress on Scottish, Welsh, and Irish traditions as richer, more ancient, and more worth preserving than those of England. This became a self-fulfilling theory; the more scholars thronged to study them, the larger grew their archives, and the duller England seemed in comparison.5 And yet there is, on the face of it, a mighty paradox here—that the land in which the term ‘folklore’ was coined is precisely the one with “the scantiest folk literature”. But perhaps there is no paradox. Should we not expect that it is precisely the place where “folklore” would be invented as a word a dozen years later should be the same heavily industrializing and rapidly urbanizing country in which folklore (or at least, in its classically- acknowledged genres) was first on the way out? Can pre-industrial culture only be valorised in an industrial culture, rural culture in an urban culture, folk poetry in a world of mass-published copyright-holding individual poets, folk belief in a world of scientific thought, folk music in a world of Great Composers, oral narrative in a world of novels? So what if much early work on identifying (or constructing) and valorising the concept of folklore happened in England, this need be no indication of the presence of folklore in England. Indeed, it might suggest precisely the opposite. If in the words of the Edwardian canard, England was, ‘the land without music’, was it also the land without folklore? We can begin to answer this question by starting with William John Thoms, the coiner of the word ‘folklore’. Little work has been done on what this foundational figure thought. While he has also featured as a straw man in certain manifesto works, these writings do not pretend to

4 English Folktales, p. xvii. Three of these tales were in fact reconstructed by their hear- ers two decades after the event, and the fourth supposedly “English” tale had been told in Romany by a Welsh Gypsy. And yet, unbeknownst to this metropolitan, non-fieldworking ‘leading authority’, English folktales had been taken down ‘from the lips of the people’ by Sternberg and Baring Gould (amongst others), and published, for example, in the pages of Notes and Queries. 5 Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. v. england—the land without folklore? 229 represent him in any considered way. The best work on Thoms, such as it is, is to be found in the pages of American scholars—Emrich, Dorson, Boyer.6 The lack of serious investigation into this foundational figure is part of a broader lack of reliable historiography of folklore studies in Eng- land, and is itself another predictable outcome of the situation Thoms laments. It is even more remarkable given that sufficient published and archival materials exist to produce a literary life of Thoms. In lieu of such a work, we can establish some chief points here. While Thoms was a published writer for over six decades, he was also a polymath and an amateur of many topics, and his chief writings on folklore were largely confined to the 1830s and 1840s. He led, as he stated in an autobiographical note now held among the manuscripts of the British Library, “an official life”,7 and his writings were made in his spare time from work as a civil servant, firstly at Chelsea Hospital, and latterly as Deputy Librarian at the House of Lords. Thus his work has a somewhat piecemeal nature, there is no great single treatise in which we can find his thought expounded. It is rather to be found scattered among introductions, reviews and notes. Perhaps the most treatise-like of all these fugitive writings are Thoms’ Athenaeum articles on the folklore of Shake- speare, which were given greater permanence later by being assembled in book form.8 As well as being an amateur and polymath, he was also somewhat of a cultural activist, agitating for the formation of societies, urging the publication and translation of certain books and issuing national calls for the collection of folklore. His invention of the word ‘folklore’, which has become the internationally accepted word, and his foundation of the journal Notes and Queries, which survives to this day, though in a somewhat narrower and more sober form that in its Victorian heyday, are among the foremost and best-known examples of his interventions. But there are other, more surprising aspects of his cultural campaigning.

Thoms, the Frisophile While Thoms’ lament cited at the beginning of this chapter is an indirect appeal to national feeling, there is something foreign about it. His choice

6 Duncan Emrich, “ ‘Folklore’: William John Thoms,” California Folklore Quarterly, vol. 5 (1946), pp. 355–374; Richard Dorson, The British Folklorists (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968); Troy Boyer, “The Forsaken Founder”, The Folklore Historian, vol. 14 (1997), pp. 55–61. 7 London, British Library Additional Manuscripts 28512, f.186. 8 W.J. Thoms, Three Notelets on Shakespeare, (London: John Russell Smith, 1865). 230 jonathan roper of the Germanism, “Father Land”, was a revealing one, a sign of a thorough-going Germanic colouring to Thoms’ thought. Elsewhere he wrote of “that remarkable coincidence which is known to exist on so many points between the folk-lore of this country and that of our Teutonic and Scan- dinavian brethren”.9 Thoms was interested in the full range of the Ger- manic, and especially in that most neglected of the Germanic languages, Frisian. Late in life, Thoms recalled how his Frisophilia had begun, back in the early 1840s, on a visit to John Mitchell Kemble “the great Saxonist”: In the course of our conversation I referred to our Anglo-Saxon progenitors, when Kemble, who spoke with great authority on such matters, proved to me that our ancestors came from Friesland. From that time Frisian has had a great attraction for me.10 Though this “great attraction” to Frisian had, as he prepared to enter his eighth decade, been chiefly limited to the collection of “a few curious Frisian books”, Thoms, as cultural activist, was about to have some impact on the history of the living Frisian language. In 1881, Thoms and his neighbour in St George Square, Westminster (Thoms lived at no. 40, Hyde Clarke at no. 32), began correspondence in the pages of Notes and Queries attempting to establish a “Friesic Guild, or Club”.11 While some of his schemes had followed a bathetic trajectory from mighty plans to minor outcomes,12 Thoms may have thought things were propitious for this Frisian scheme. Interest in the language seemed to be growing—a

9 [W.J. Thoms], Review of “Popular Rhymes and Nursery tales. A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England”, The Athenaeum, 1127 (1849), pp. 568–570. 10 W.J. Thoms, “A Frisian Bible”, The Athenaeum, 2879 (Dec. 1882), pp. 898–899. 11 Hyde Clarke, “A Frisic Guild, or Club”, Notes and Queries, series 6, vol. 4, no. 84 (1881), p. 107. 12 In addition to the relative failures of various of his projects I list in a previous article (Jonathan Roper, “Thoms and the Unachieved ‘Folk-Lore of England’ ”, Folklore, vol. 118, no. 2 (2007), pp. 203–216, which include two failed journals, one failed column, one discon- tinued series of translations, the financial disappointment of his first book, the nugatory size of his work on Shakespeare when compared with that of his mentor, we can also note two more unrealized plans. In 1845, notice came that he was to publish “In Monthly Parts, price 3s. 6d. each” a series entitled “Memoirs of Extraordinary Characters.” (Anon, 1845: 5). In 1846, one could read in the minutes of the meeting of the (short-lived) Shakespeare Society, that “A Volume of BALLADS UPON WHICH OLD PLAYS WERE FOUNDED, OR WHICH WERE FOUNDED UPON OLD PLAYS” was to be edited for the Society by W.J. Thoms, Esq., F.S.A. (Anon, 1846: 5). Neither of these two works ever appeared, a particular shame in the last case, as it would have been highly interesting to know more of Thoms’ take on ballads. Anon., Mr Bentley’s New Publications. May, M.DCCC.XLV. (London: Rich- ard Bentley, 1845). Anon., Report of the Council of the Shakespeare Society to the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Members. (London: The Shakespeare Society, 1846). england—the land without folklore? 231 grammar of Old Frisian had recently been published in English—and five years earlier, Thoms’ similar agitation in the pages of the same journal for the formation of a Folklore Society had been successful. In the event, however, just two correspondents made their interest known in the pages of the journal, and the planned “Guild, or Club” came to nothing. But there was a strange issue from the debate. Thoms had earlier complained that while the Bible Society has published the Bible in 300 tongues, there was no Frisian translation.13 The passage quoted above continues: I lately wanted to get a Frisian Bible, but I regret to find that the Bible Soci- ety have not printed one in that cognate tongue. Surely with the large funds which the Society possesses it might do so.14 Clarke and Thoms finally convinced the Bible Society to do something. Not, in the event, the commissioning of a new and complete translation, but the republishing of Halbertsma’s 1857 translation of the Gospel of Matthew.15 This Gospel had originally been commissioned for linguistic reasons by the philologist Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, for a strictly limited audience of 250 philologist-subscribers. The Bible Society’s edition was printed in an edition of 2000, and was intended for the Frisians themselves. This was the reverse of the all too typical pattern of Thoms’ schemes. Here a minor plan had a major outcome—Thoms’ wish to procure a Frisian bible to aid in his language learning had led to the first publication of a mass edition of a Biblical text in the Frisian language.

Thoms, the European One of the chief of Thoms’ books, and the one with the most of him in, is The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. Despite Thoms’ Germanic skills and affinities, he did not view Shakespeare through Germanic-tinted spectacles, nor did he envision English folklore as something solely Germanic. In this book, Thoms states that the folklore of England is of “varied origin”16 and that the Germanic and Celtic elements in it were woven so close that it “is no longer possible to say with certainty the points at which the one ceases and the other has supplanted it”.17 Here he argued against a purely

13 W.J. Thoms, “A Frisic Guild”, Notes and Queries, series 6, vol. 4, no. 85 (1881), pp. 126–127. 14 “A Frisian Bible”, p. 898. 15 H.[yde] C.[larke], “Frisian”, Notes and Queries, series 6, vol. 10, no. 259, (1884), p. 464. 16 Three Notelets on Shakespeare, p. 108. 17 Op. cit., p. 27. 232 jonathan roper

Germanicising approach. But Thoms’ position was equally opposed to excessively Celticising approaches. It was also, for that matter, applicable against the Classicizing and Hebraicising approaches, as instanced in the manner John Aubrey couched his observations of seventeenth-century vernacular culture as “the Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme”. A year after praising ‘folk-lore’ as “a good Saxon compound”, he wrote that it was certain that the fairies of Shakespeare, and of many of our fireside stories, are indebted for several of the characteristics with which they are invested, both in the works of our poets and in the stories of our old crones, to their Celtic descent.18 Shakespeare’s fairy lore was an intermixture of that which “the followers of Hengest and Horsa spread” and that which “prevailed ‘in olde days o the King Artour/ Of which that Bretons speken great honour’.”19 Else- where in this book he stated (without an excessive amount of philological argument) his favoured etymologies for certain keywords in English folklore: ‘fairy’ was, he claimed, a Latin-derived word, ‘elf ’ a Germanic one, ‘Mab’ a Celtic one, and ‘Puck’ both Germanic and Celtic “like the race of fairies itself ”.20 Again we can see that he was not looking for purely Saxon origins—the assortment of linguistic etymologies matched his conception of the assorted origins of English folklore itself. Similarly, the references he made to Dutch, Danish, Frisian, Norwe- gian, Swedish, German, Breton, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Lusatian, Norman and Spanish folklore as relevant comparanda shows that Thoms was not attempting to set up these varied traditions as fundamentally opposed or contradictory to English folklore. Even when he was discussing Frisian ideas of “Puk”, his comparanda was not contemporary English folklore, but the works of Shakespeare and contemporary Scottish and Irish tradition (as found in Crofton Croker or in Chambers). This again shows us he did not set up the Celtic and Germanic as polar opposites (“popular belief as it exists in these islands”), though it also rather bespeaks the relative paucity of the English folklore record at this time. Even more clearly in his remarks about fairies’ love of music and dancing he commented about the internationally-shared character of this notion on which “the universal voice of national tradition is so well

18 Ibid. 19 Op. cit., p. 33 20 Op. cit., p. 83. england—the land without folklore? 233 agreed”.21 Thoms was not one of those who deployed folklore to differentiate nation from nation. And yet despite all this, there are times when in the figure of Thoms we can discern a variant of a figure common throughout Europe then and now, the folklorist as cultural nationalist.22 Czeslaw Milosz, in his essay On Nationalism, suggests that it is “the humiliation felt by young educated people as a group [which] is usually at the source of nationalism or political romanticism”.23 Likewise, Alan Dundes has suggested that the collection and valorisation of folklore has been typical of those nations suffering from a national inferiority complex.24 There is more than a hint of humiliation in Thoms’ lament about the lack of any “preservation of the Legends of our ‘Father Land’” when compared with the great works being produced for other groups. Similarly, there was a type of national inferiority complex evident as well—an unusual one, not centring around England’s absence of ‘high’ literary culture, but around England’s absence (of records) of ‘low’ oral culture.25 Is it too much to discern in Thoms’ lament and repeated calls for the collection of folklore to make up for this shaming absence the lineaments of an attitude more common in central or eastern Europe? Perhaps if there had been sufficient “young educated people” with the same sense of cultural humiliation to act “as a group”, the project would have been successful. But, as it was, Thoms was something of an oddity in Victorian England—a representative of a National Romanticism more typically found in other parts of Europe. Indeed, like many such figures, Thoms even attempted to make traditional national tales better known among the coming generations by retelling traditional tales (such as Guy of Warwick and Robin Hood) for children in his book The Old Story Books of England, subsequently issued in two separate volumes: Gammer Gurton’s Pleasant Stories and Gammer

21 Op. cit., p. 40. 22 Jonathan Roper, “‘Our National Folk-Lore’: William Thoms as Cultural Nationalist”, in Krishna Sen and Sudeshna Chakravarti, eds, Narrating the (Trans)Nation: The Dialectics of Culture and Identity (Calcutta: Dasgupta, 2008), pp. 60–74. 23 Czeslaw Milosz, Beginning With My Streets. Baltic Reflections (London: I.B. Taurus, 1992), p. 81. 24 Alan Dundes, “Nationalistic Inferiority Complexes and the Fabrication of Fakelore: A Reconsideration of Ossian, the Kinder-und Hausmärchen, the Kalevala and Paul Bunyan”, Journal of Folklore Research vol. 22, no. 1 (1985), pp. 5–18. 25 In fact it is even more complex than this. Whereas other nations might say “We have no Shakespeare of our own, but we have our own folklore” (the classic folk trope), Thoms is saying “We may have Shakespeare, but we don’t alas! have our own folklore.” In his Athenaeum articles on the “Folk-Lore of Shakespeare” he goes on to argue that this does not matter so much, as Shakespeare is full of folklore. 234 jonathan roper

Gurton’s Famous Histories.26 His pseudonym, Ambrose Merton, first appeared not in his 1846 piece coining the word ‘folklore’, but as editor of these 1845 stories for children. It may be that using a pseudonym was primarily motivated by Thoms wanting to dissociate himself as serious antiquarian from a children’s author. It may also be that he wished to further dissociate himself as serious antiquarian from someone making (often unsuccessful) national romantic interventions.

Thoms’ Calls for the Collection of Folklore Throughout the middle years of his life, Thoms made recurrent calls for the nationwide collection of folklore (1834, 1847, 1850), which when recorded should then be sent to him. No doubt, he hoped at this stage in his life that he could emulate Grimm, and publish an Englische Mythologie—a treatise that would draw on contemporary and earlier folklore to illustrate the beliefs and stories of ancient times in England, while also making connections with other cultural traditions. Although he never managed to write such a work,27 the last of these calls did bring about substantial response over a long period, and thus Thoms is to be credited in having established one of the most significant records of English folklore. Notes and Queries was helped by its informal format—it was not unusual to find a query asking for explanation of an odd word a servant had recently used, or a note of a custom one had come across while holidaying. In other words, folklore could successfully be gathered in the nineteenth-century Notes and Queries, as the triviality threshold then was set blessedly low. But what did Thoms know of English folklore? He had clearly read much; in his 1846 Athenaueum call he specifically mentions and asks for additional information on traditions found up and down the country—in Devon, Worcestershire, Derbyshire, Essex, Yorkshire, Kent and Cornwall.28 But while it is impressive that he was aware of such details as legends of a headless horseman driving headless steeds in Parsloes or of stories of

26 Ambrose Merton, [i.e. W.J. Thoms], The Old Story Books of England (London: Joseph Cundall, 1845), Gammer Gurton’s Pleasant Stories (London: Joseph Cundall, 1845), Gammer Gurton’s Famous Histories (London: Joseph Cundall, 1845). 27 Jonathan Roper, “Thoms and the Unachieved ‘Folk-Lore of England’ ”, Folklore vol. 118, no. 2 (2007), pp. 203–216. 28 These exclusively English geographical references make clear that Thoms is not following the practice of many English people during the heyday of the United Kingdom, say 1801–1999, (and indeed even sometimes today) to say “England” when they mean Britain (or even the British Isles). Thoms says “England” and cashes this out as England by means of the named locations he is interested in. england—the land without folklore? 235 a “fairy pipe-manufactory” in Swinborne, the fact that he was asking for information about the currency of this folklore from his readers betrays his lack of firsthand knowledge. Likewise, when elsewhere he suggesed Wiltshire would be the best hunting ground for folklore,29 we may assume that this was more motivated by his recent editing of Aubrey’s records of seventeenth-century Wiltshire folklore than by any firsthand meeting between Thoms and the bearers of Wiltshire traditions.

Thoms, the Grimmian Unusually for his period, Thoms had a good knowledge of German. His linguistic skills enabled him to make translations from German30 and to read the path-breaking work of contemporary German students of culture early on, especially the work of his greatest intellectual influence, and most cited authority, Jacob Grimm. It was his reading of Grimm that made Thoms different from his mentor Francis Douce, and other antiquarians of that vintage. The most significant of Grimm’s works for Thoms was the Deutsche Mythologie (“this treasure-house of folk-lore”), which Thoms read in German in its first edition,31 but even in the Lays and Legends books of 1834, issued before the Mythologie was first published, Grimm was already a frequently cited authority. In short, Thoms was a Grimmian. A striking example of this is shown by the varying treatments of the works of Shakespeare given by Thoms and by his mentor Francis Douce four decades previously. In his Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners (1807), Douce concentrated upon providing the correct meaning for obsolete or disputed words. Although he did discuss clowns and fools, the Gesta Romanorum, and “the ancient English morris dance” in three appendices, his work was essentially one of pre-Victorian philology:

29 “There is no county in England from which more abundant materials for a History of our Popular Antiquities might be gathered than that of Wilts.” W.J. Thoms, “Folk-Lore: Wiltshire Rhymes on the Cuckoo”, The Athenaeum vol. 985 (1846), p. 932. 30 Thoms translated the important work of the Danish archaeologist Worsae from a German translation: J.J. Worsaæ, Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, by J.J. Worsaæ, Trans- lated and Applied to the Illustration of Similar Remains in England by W.J. Thoms (London: J.H. Parker, 1849). Thoms also translated a number of German folktales and ballads, which can be found in the two volumes of his Lays and Legends of Various Countries: Germany (London: 1834). 31 Thoms, W.J., Review of “Teutonic Mythology. By Jacob Grimm. Translated from the fourth edition, with Notes and Appendix, by James Steven Stallybrass, vol. 1”, Folk-Lore Record vol. 2 (1879), pp. 226–227. 236 jonathan roper

Shakespeare’s Ourselves “is an ablative absolute . . . much more properly used than ourself ”, to give a typical example. In Thoms’ Athenaeum articles on the “Folk-Lore of Shakespeare” four decades later, the focus was much more on the contents of Shakespeare’s words; he attempted to use Shakespeare’s depiction of fairies as representative of contemporary vernacular beliefs, rather conveniently taking the folklore in the pages of Shakespeare as being unproblematically “truthful copies” of contemporary folklore, only mildly changed by being “coloured” and “grouped”.32 Elsewhere in the same study, we find Thoms asserting that Shakespeare did not significantly transform his folkloric materials when he speaks of Shakespeare “echoing the popular voice”.33 Thoms did not offer any justification for this methodologically conve- nient assumption that the plays were a reliable source for reconstructing contemporaneous English vernacular culture. And Thoms was certainly aware that writers could modify folklore substantially in their work— he did not regard Goethe’s treatment of folklore in Faust as a mirror of tradition.34 He took it that “fairy mythology” was the best represented aspect of folklore in Shakespeare’s work. The turn from the 1839 term “fairy lore”35 to “fairy mythology” in 1847 was an interestingly Grimmian shift. “Fairy mythology” suggests that popular supernatural beliefs could be seen as being survivals, albeit in a sometimes degraded and broken form, of earlier Germanic, Celtic or other mythologies. According to such a conception, various Shakespearean and folkloric characters are identifiable with mythological characters. Thus Thoms tell us Robin Goodfel- low is to be identified with Puck, and Queen Mab with the Night Mare/ Night Hag/Incubus Ephialtes/Frau Holle/Hulda. Thoms was highly Grim- mian in this, although he did not bring out the full implications of his identifications—what might it mean to say Robin Goodfellow was Puck: should we infer that Robin Goodfellow was really Puck, or should we infer that Robin Goodfellow was the historical successor of Puck, or should we infer something else instead? This move from “lore” to “mythology” was also a significance-bestowing one, another attempt by Thoms to defeat the charge of triviality.36

32 Three Notelets on Shakespeare, p. 108. 33 Ibid., p. 100. 34 W.J. Thoms, Anecdotes and Traditions Illustrative of Early English History and Lit- erature Derived from MS. Sources (London: John Bower Nichols and Son for the Camden Society, 1839), p. 98. 35 Ibid., p. 116. 36 Compare “Thoms and the Unachieved ‘Folk-Lore of England’”, p. 207. england—the land without folklore? 237

Another example of Thoms having, like Grimm, taken a mythologising approach to vernacular culture, was evident in his very first book, A Collection of Early English Prose Romances. In the preface to one of these texts, Friar Rush, Thoms accepted the equation made by other mytholo- gisers before him (such as Walter Scott and Francis Palgrave) between the ‘Frier’ in a passage in Harsnet’s 1603 Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, with the malign spirit Friar Rush. In the context of the book as a whole, the reference to the ‘Frier’ was far more plausibly interpreted as a satirical reference to the alleged misdeeds of clergy in the age of Catholi- cism than to a folkloric spirit. Thoms went beyond his predecessors, however, in additionally equating Friar Rush with Robin Goodfellow. George Lyman Kittredge, the Harvard scholar of witchcraft and of ballads, cut through these mythologising mis- interpretations in a formidably referenced article in 1900,37 in which he showed Thoms’ attempts (later accepted by a number of scholars, including Keightley, Wolf and Endlicher, and Herford) to co-opt Friar Rush as “an adopted English member of the company of Teutonic house-cobolds”38 to be groundless. Kittredge was not entirely dismissive of Thoms’ ideas however: he accepted Thoms’ contentions that Will o’ the Wisps were often confused with goblins, and that the “friar’s lantern” was a name for a Will o’ the Wisp. Kittredge’s scholarship bears some resemblances to Thoms’ both in its interests and its German-style approach, but, informed by three-quarters of a century of additional scholarship, and with the approach of a professional academic rather than an amateur author, it was noticeably more rigorous. Nevertheless, Kittredge’s is a piece that the later Thoms might himself have produced if his late turn to debunking had been applied to folklore methodology rather than to popular beliefs about extreme longevity (‘ultra-centenarism’)39 and Royal pretenders.40

37 G.L. Kittredge, “The Friar’s Lantern and Friar Rush”, Publications of the Modern Lan- guage Association of America vol. 15, no. 4 (1900), pp. 415–441. 38 “The Friar’s Lantern and Friar Rush”, p. 422. 39 For example, W.J. Thoms, Human Longevity: Its Facts and Fictions Including an Inquiry into Some of the More Remarkable Instances, and Suggestions for Testing Reputed Cases, Illustrated by Examples (London: John Murray, 1873). 40 For example, W.J. Thoms, Hannah Lightfoot.—Queen Charlotte and the Chevalier d’Éon.—Dr. Wilmot’s Polish Princess: Lord Chatham and Princess Olive (London: Spottis- woode, 1872). 238 jonathan roper

Grimm’s Web Grimm was at the centre of a web of European philologists and folklorists, in touch with figures from Lönnrot in Finland to Karadžić in Serbia and Cosquin in France. Thoms’ friend Kemble (who first prompted his Frisophilia) was the connection that enabled contact between Thoms and Grimm at one remove. Kemble began a correspondence with Grimm in 1832 and soon began providing him with material from a variety of libraries in England and on the continent to help him prepare the Deutsche Mythologie. In his role of “collector or observer” for Jacob Grimm, Kemble’s contribution to the first and second editions was “substantial”.41 Writing to Grimm on the 24th of May, 1839 (i.e. between the first [1835] and second [1844] editions), Kemble makes bold enough to give the following advice to his mentor: Do not be in a hurry with the new ed[itio]n of the Mythologie; in a few months you will have some curious materials, in a collection published by a friend of mine for the “Camden Society”: it is an account of the English superstitions, and contains some valuable matter, much of which is new. You shall have the book as soon as it appears.42 In his next letter that September, Kemble enclosed Thoms’ Anecdotes and Traditions with the following guidance: “the second part will interest you: there are some Mythologica in it.”43 Writing to Grimm three years later regarding the Mythologie, Kemble again mentions Thoms’ Anecdotes and Traditions, “which I strongly recommend you to read”.44 What was in the book that Thoms assembled, and the importance of which was repeatedly pressed upon Grimm? The key folkloric part was, as Kemble suggested, “the second part”, that is some previously unpublished writings by the seventeenth-century folklorist avant la lettre, John Aubrey. Thoms annotated them in such a way as to show “as far as possible, the existence of parallel superstitions”.45 The sources of these “parallel

41 R.A. Wiley, John Mitchell Kemble and Jakob Grimm; a correspondence 1832–1852. Unpublished letters of Kemble and translated answers of Grimm (Leiden: Brill, 1971), p. 10. 42 Wiley (1971: 176). Thoms had first had some contact via Kemble with Grimm back in 1835, when Kemble requested Thoms to copy a passage in a Latin manuscript in his possession relating to Reynard the Fox (Wiley: 84). Thoms had also subsequently reviewed Grimm’s Reinhart Fuchs in the journal Kemble edited, the Foreign and Quarterly Review, vol. 18 (1836), p. 286. In a letter Grimm wrote to Kemble on 14th of July, 1837, he asked Kemble to thank Thoms for his review (p. 144). 43 John Mitchell Kemble and Jakob Grimm, p. 184. 44 Ibid., p. 245. 45 Anecdotes and Traditions, p. ix. england—the land without folklore? 239 superstitions” were largely Germanophone (and “as yet too little known to the antiquarian students of this country”).46 These included the first edition of Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, as well as the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen, and Dobenek’s study of the folk beliefs of the German Middle Ages (Volksglauben des Deutschen Mittelalters). However, Thoms’ sources were not confined to the German-speaking world, for he also refers to Germanophone studies of Danish, Dutch and Jewish traditions (Thiele’s Danske Folkesagn in German translation, Hoffman’s Horae Belgicae and Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judenthum). Then as now, the nationalism often found in folklore studies could prove to be a route to internationalism in scholarship: you showed the worth of your own area’s lore by demonstrating its parallels with, and indeed its ability to be integrated into, the existing canon of internationally respected folklore writings.47 Thoms, worrying about the triviality of what he was offering by editing this somewhat unconventional volume in the prestigious Camden Soci- ety series, assured himself and us that in contrast to the somewhat more trivial anecdotes of L’Estrange and Collet, which made up the first and third parts of the book, “no apology is necessary” for printing the traditions of Aubrey, for he had been assured by very competent authority that two or three of the facts contained in the second part [i.e. the extracts from Aubrey] of this work will, in all probability, be regarded by that profound scholar Dr. Jacob Grimm, the learned author of the “Deutsche Mythologie,” as of the first importance in deciding a point very essential to a right knowledge of that subject, he thinks he shall have satisfied.48 This “very competent authority” was no doubt John Mitchell Kemble. Thoms might have imagined that certain of the forty-six traditions and superstitions he described would be of interest to the author of the Deutsche Mythologie, given that in his notes to a dozen of them (“The Yule Log”, “The Loving Cup”, “The Holy Mawle”, “Altars”, “Funeral Song”, “Well- Flowering”, “Cockle Bread”, “Chaucer’s Tregatours”, “Hardmen”, “Lent is

46 Op. cit., p. x. 47 At international folklore meetings in the 1990s and 2000s I have repeatedly seen the surprising spectacle of fundamentally ethno-nationalist scholars behaving perfectly col- legially with scholars from different and even opposing ethno-nationalisms by virtue of their shared underlying folkloristic paradigm (no matter that their chosen interpretations are different). 48 Anecdotes and Traditions, p. vii. 240 jonathan roper

Dead”, “ ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ of Robin Goodfellow”, and “Fairies”)49 he mentioned them in connection with Grimm’s great work. In the event, Grimm did make scattered use of Thoms’ Anecdotes and Traditions. For example, the famous Lyke Wake Dirge is the tradition for which Thoms provided the fullest annotation, noting, for instance, Jewish and Islamic parallels to passage about the Bridge of Dread “na brader than a thread”, as well as making a reference to Grimm’s Mythologie regarding Todtenschuh. In Chapter 26 (“Seelen”) of the 1854 edition of the Mythologie we find Grimm has added the following reference to his discussion: Ein nordengl. lied, das man sonst bei der lechenwache sang, nennt “the bridge of dread no brader than a thread” . . . uber welche die seele in der unterwelt zu schreiten hat. (J. Thoms anecd. and trad. s. 89. 90.)50 Though Grimm added a footnote listing, with acknowledgement, all Thoms’ comparanda, we only have a single sentence in the text tacked on to the end of a paragraph, and Grimm had not even got Thoms’ name entirely correctly. Grimm made a similar minor addition on the following page, where to his discussion of the Yorkshire death shoes (for which he has used Walter Scott, who was another of his correspondents, as his guide), he added again a reference to Thoms: Das land, wodurch die Seele wandern muss, heisst auch whinny moor (der pfriemen sumpf, whin ist gleichviel mit furz, ginster, pfrieme). Thoms a. a. o. 89.51 Thoms (and via him Aubrey, and via Aubrey Mr. Mawtese, and via Mr. Mawtese his father, which is where we have to end this chain as his source is unknown) was drawn on here by Grimm simply to provide an alternate name for the land to be traversed in the death shoes. More might have been done with the Dirge. And while Grimm (here following Thoms) was correct to equate ‘whin’ with ‘furze’, he was misled by his etymologising equation of ‘moor’ with German ‘Meer’, which transforms the moor into a bog.52

49 These are, respectively, Traditions 143, 145, 150, 152, 159, 160, 164, 168, 182, 183, 185 and 186 in Anecdotes and Traditions. 50 Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, (3rd edn), (Göttingen: Dieterische Buchhand- lung, 1854), p. 794. In Stallybrass’ translation this sentence reads: “A North English song that used to be sung at lykewakes, names ‘the bridge of dread, no broader than a thread’, over which the soul had to pass in the underworld (J. Thoms’ Anecd. and trad. pp. 89. 90)”. 51 Deutsche Mythologie, p. 795. 52 There is something slapdash in these additions from Thoms in the Deutsche Mytholo- gie in terms of typography, which Grimm’s printer, rather than Grimm himself, might be england—the land without folklore? 241

The final example of Grimm’s use of Thoms come in Chapter 17, entry 185 in Thoms, which he entitled “ ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ of Robin Goodfellow”: Mr. Lancelot Morehouse did aver to me, super verbum Sacerdotis, that he did once heare such a lowd laugh on the other side of a hedge, and was sure that no human lungs could afford such laugh.53 Following this testimony from John Aubrey, Thoms added as commen- tary that this “reminds us of Dr. Johnson’s belief of having once heard his mother’s voice calling ‘Samuel,’ when they were many miles asunder”, (a parallel seeming at odds with the interpretation that his introduction of Robin Goodfellow in his title to this extract suggests). In Chapter 17 of the 1854 edition of the Deutsche Mythologie, which Grimm entitled “wichte und elbe” (or “Wights and Elves” in the Stally- brass translation), the expression “lachen wie ein kobold” (to laugh like a kobold) is discussed. Near the end of this paragraph comes the following brief reference to Thoms’s work: “ho, ho, ho, the lowd laugh of Robin goodfellow”. anecdotes and traditions ed. by Wam J. Thoms. Lond. 1839 p. 115.54 While Grimm implicitly accepted Thoms’ interpretation, asserted in the title that Thoms’s gave to the extract from Aubrey, that this was Robin Goodfellow (i.e. a ‘wight’ or an ‘elf ’, rather than any other kind of supernatural being or occurrence), the reference is the baldest one possible, inserted near the end of the discussion with no further comment. While Grimm did indeed use “two or three of the facts” from the volume of Anecdotes and Tradtions that Kemble had sent him, the minor use Grimm made of them as supplementary proofs supporting his previously-arrived- at position meant that in Thoms’s high talk of them being “of the first importance” there was again more than the suspicion of bathos. There has also been a great change in the ideals of academic folkloristic scholarship since Grimm’s and Thoms’ day.55 Grimm, and Thoms from him, saw recent and contemporary folklore as the fragments of partly lost, to blame for. As well as the dropped “W.” in Thoms’ name on p. 794, we find the “t” of “traditions” transformed here on p. 795 into an “o”. Furthermore, two of the three sentences which reference Thoms lack a capital letter at their start (pp. 470, 795). 53 Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 115. 54 Deutsche Mythologie, p. 470. 55 We can note that while such a mythologizing approach is nowadays not accepted in the academic world, it is probably represents the most widespread popular approach to folklore. Indeed while I was writing this piece in July 2009, I heard a public talk by a well- known Cheshire author, the central point of which was that a version of Motif E502 The 242 jonathan roper partly retrievable pre-Christian practice and belief. According to such a mythologising approach to the material, it could be assumed that “ogres and demons, heroes and princesses of household tales and village legends had descended from the heathen gods and goddesses”,56 and thus that details of those ancient gods and goddesses could be reconstructed from folksong and folktale. Thoms expressed this view in his introduction to an anthology of “scattered fragments of FOLK LORE” from the first six years of Notes and Queries. Thoms admitted that the contents of his book “may appear little better than the drivellings of antiquated crones” to “those who have paid no attention to the subject”: Yet worthless as they now seem the time will come when some future disciple of Jacob Grimm shall evolve from them—as Owen from the disjecta membra of the old world—a complete system of the ancient mythology of these islands? It is unclear whether the question mark here represents a typographical error, or Thoms’ doubt as to the achievability of such a goal. Indeed the fact that publication of this book was to mark a halt in his folkloristic activity for almost two decades may speak to this. Grimm’s mythologising approach was no doubt appealing to Thoms, as it meant that folklore, one of his “premiers amours”,57 could be a non- trivial pursuit. But at times in Thoms we can gain sight of another and somewhat different detrivialising approach to folklore—one which was not mythologizing, but allegorising—as here where he took up something as trivial-seeming as “Humpty Dumpty” in his review of Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes of England: “Humptie Dumptie sat on a Wall” is called, by Mr. Halliwell, as well as by others, a riddle, signifying an egg. We think it has a much larger application. Is it not a type of vaulting ambition? Is not every one able to point to Hump- tie Dumpties, who, having perched up high, have lost their balance, “had a great fall,” and have never been able to remount to “where they sat before”? How many authors, dramatists, popular preachers, “lions”, politicians, doctors, there are who are “Humptie Dumpties”.

Sleeping Army (known to the Germans as “the Barbarossa story”) told by his grandfather contained in fact details of Neolithic ritual practice in that locality. 56 Richard Dorson, “Introduction”, p. vii, in Kurt Ranke, Folktales of Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 57 W.J. Thoms, “The Preface”, The Folk-Lore Record, vol. 1 (1878), p. xiii. england—the land without folklore? 243

Thoms also saw “The Lion and the Unicorn” as “a moral tale of universal anxiety to get rid of two quarrelsome figures even by bribery”, and went on to envisage the rhyme “There was lady lov’d a swine” allegorically: “Is it not common to all to have their best endeavours of love and kindness thus treated with a ‘hoogh’?” Thoms ended his piece hoping he has done “enough to redeem these rhymes from the charge of being nothing better than ‘Euphonious nonsense’.”58 Here it is allegory, rather than mythologi- ziation, which provides Thoms’ route out of triviality.

Thoms, the Folklorist? Although he was a minor thinker and a significant cultural activist and an author who treated folkloric matters at certain stages in his career, we might well ask whether Thoms can rightly be termed a folklorist. He cannot, certainly, be described as a field folklorist.59 If Thoms can be referred to by his own word,60 he was a book-oriented folklorist. Indeed he was a skilful one, good at pointing out the presence of folklore in printed sources predating their orally-collected examples. For example, in Anecdotes and Traditions, Thoms reminds us that the four stanzas beginning “Yea Rosa- mond, fair Rosamond” that Aubrey remembered his nurse, Katharine Bushell, a local Wiltshire woman, singing around 1630 had been authored by Thomas Deloney and printed by him in book form in 1612.61 Likewise in The Folklore of Shakespeare, the chief new pieces of evidence he himself added to the pile of previous gatherings were two early seventeenth- century chapbooks on “the Mad and Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow”. But his valuable contributions were alas few and far between in the course of a busy “official life”.62 If it is hard to claim that Thoms was a full-blooded folklorist, were there any English folklorists comparable with, say, Lönnrot, Cosquin or

58 [W.J. Thoms], Review of “The Nursery Rhymes of England”, The Athenaeum no. 809 (1843), pp. 409–411. 59 There is one possible exception to this. Towards the end of his life Thoms recalled an incident in 1834 when he wrote down notes on “the Highland custom of divining by the shoulder-of-mutton bone.” He gain the information from “Mr. Donald McPherson, a bookseller of Chelsea” when visiting his shop. Thus ironically, the one time Thoms seems to have recorded folklore from a firsthand source was not from a peasant in the English provinces, but from a Scot living near Thoms in Chelsea: William Thoms, “Divination by the Blade-bone”, The Folk-Lore Record, vol. 1 (1878), pp. 176–179. 60 Jonathan Roper, “Origin of the Term ‘Folklorist’”, FLS News—the Newsletter of the Folklore Society no. 49 (June 2006), p. 16. 61 Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 105. 62 London, British Library Additional Manuscripts 28512, f. 186. 244 jonathan roper

Karadžić? The short answer is no. Who then were the English folklorists in the long nineteenth century? Here England diverges much from the continental pattern, though there are some points of similarity. Although Thoms’ word folklore was gradually accepted into English and indeed international discourse, the whole folklore paradigm (the idea that there were identifiable areas of culture that could be termed folklore, and that they were valuable, and should be collected, stored, made publicly accessible, and play a symbolic part in public life) was largely rejected in England. Of course, the historical background of regions where the folklore paradigm succeeded was substantially different. These regions were often not existing nation-states, but self-proclaimed ‘stateless nations’ ruled over by the speakers of another language, where the collection and cultivation of folklore played a role in ethno-political struggle, rather than, like Eng- land, being nations at the centre of multinational states that dominated their neighbours, or indeed nations at the centre of international empires. Again, regions where the folklore paradigm was successful were often those that lacked much of a historical high culture, most especially those lacking historical vernacular literature, and which were energised by cultural inferiority complexes, rather than countries such as Victorian England or France which suffered if anything from cultural superiority complexes. If you have a Shakespeare or a Molière, you may not see such a pressing need to seek out the songs and stories of your unlettered peasantry. If we take Finland as exemplary of perhaps the land where the folklore paradigm was wholeheartedly accepted, we can make some instructive comparisons. Finland had never been a nation-state; in the historical period: it had first been dominated by Sweden, and later was part of the Russian Empire. It was also an area with little high literary culture. The Finnish Literature Society, when it was formed on a tide of national romanticism, was concerned less with individual novelists than with oral literature. That Society (the Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura) co-ordinated the collection of folklore within the Grand Duchy of Finland, and among Finnish speakers elsewhere, and succeeded in garnered enormous returns (to give one example, over 50 000 verbal charms were notated). Indeed the Society still collects folklore today. In London, a Folklore Society (or The Folklore Society, as it was titled in a mixture of complacency, arrogance and naivety) had indeed been established following action by Thoms and others, but it did not succeed on anything like the same scale (it published not many more than fifty English verbal charms in the period up to the Second World War, for instance—maybe a thousandth the amount of the england—the land without folklore? 245

Finnish collections from a population ten times larger). The difference in results was due to differences in the societies and their cultural context in a number of significant regards. We can mention just two here. Firstly, The Folklore Society was set up later, according to both absolute chronology (in 1878 as opposed to 1831), and, more importantly, relative chronology— the England of 1878 was far more urbanised and industrialised that the Finland of 1878, or indeed of much later, and was already depleted in the largely pre-industrial genres of epic or Märchen. Though both cities and industry have their own vernacular culture, far more of “the prior culture” (to use George Ewart Evans’ term) was available to be collected in Finland. For better or worse, it is the prior culture that national-romantic folklorists were attracted to and which is used to construct national symbols and images rather than the urban and the industrial. But perhaps the leading lights of the Council of the Folklore Society, who, like Thoms, may have had little contact with vernacular culture in their everyday lives, assumed too readily that folklore was disappearing from contemporary England, when they chose to focus more on reprinting previously collected folklore in the County Folklore volumes, rather than initiating contemporary collection programmes that might have come up trumps. Another significant difference was that the relative lack of overlap between cultural nationalism and an interest in vernacular culture in England, meant that The Folklore Society had a focus that was, as can be seen from early copies of the Journal, potentially global. Another significant difference, no doubt connected with the relative absence of cultural nationalism in this sphere, was that folklore studies were conceived on a more individualistic basis than in Finland or elsewhere. In other words, the natural outlet of any folklore work was the article rather than the archive. This has certain implications: an article represents individual effort, whereas an archive represents collective effort. The working notes of a single scholar are all too often discarded once they have been ‘written up’, whereas material collected in an archive is a permanent potential resource, where the insignificant can be stored and grow meaningful from what it is collated with, and by what subsequent use any researchers may put it to. The availability of the same material to any bona fide researcher, i.e. the fact that the material can be checked, also tends to keep scholars honest, at least in their citations of that archival material, and less inclined to ‘shape’ the evidence. A respect for the evidence (and its context) was sadly not always strong in English folklore study well into the twentieth century. In short, the model of a collective archive to which 246 jonathan roper anyone can contribute or draw upon, mirroring the collective building of the nation, and as contrasted with the ‘heroic’, individualistic model of single-authored articles and research projects, is a model with generally positive scholarly consequences. The presence of such a folklore archive in England would have raised the bar in terms of scholarly method in folklore studies. There were collective endeavours in English folklore studies— the Notes and Queries forum, the collective reprinting programme of the County Folklore volumes, The Folklore Society’s Brand Committee, which aimed, unsuccessfully in the event, to produce a comprehensive successor to John Brand’s classic Observations on Popular Antiquities—but they remained the exceptions rather the rule. Archives and archival contributors have their own social history of course. Some of this is hinted at in a suggestive remark made in passing in a pamphlet for the Finnish Literature Society’s Archive which speaks of the contributors to its archive in nineteenth century as being doctors, pastors, educated peasants and schoolteachers. In England, sadly few ‘educated peasants’, teachers or doctors were folklorists. Two not uncommon backgrounds for people interested in folklore were those of liberal lawyers and the daughters of gentry. But perhaps the chief single class interested in popular antiquities, indeed in the vernacular most broadly in England including dialect, botany and archaeology, was that of the country parson.

Pastors and the Vernacular A study could be made of the activities of pastors in documenting the vernacular throughout Europe from the days of Bishop Percy and pastor Herder to the activities of the Reverends Halbertsma in Friesland, Gregor in north-east Scotland, and Feilberg in Jutland. Pastors in rural parishes came into daily interaction with the rural working classes, and will have had prolonged, although no doubt partial, opportunities to observe vernacular culture. There were few other members of the professional classes whose daily work involved such contact with ‘the folk’. Tom Burton and Kenneth Ruthven have written amusingly on the preponderance of clerics among the early English dialectologists: The varieties of dialectal speech in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England were often recorded by Oxbridge-educated churchmen marooned in regional parishes. Obliged professionally to visit the sick and comfort the bereaved as well as officiate at baptisms, marriages, and funerals, they regularly conversed with parishioners whose unfamiliar locutions they england—the land without folklore? 247

transcribed as diligently as if they had been missionaries working in remote corners of the British Empire.63 In the nineteenth century, the vicars and rectors of the Church of Eng- land would be educated men, in epistolary and ecclesiastical contact with others of their class, some known from their university days, some more recent diocesan colleagues. They would very often be from a different part of the country than their parish. In other words, they would have met three key conditions for the documentation of the vernacular: the opportunity to observe, the presence of fresh, reportable things to observe, and a network of people located elsewhere to communicate their observations to. Sometimes these networks stretched not only across diocesan, but international borders. The Rev. William Parish who compiled a Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, much of the material for which came from observations of his parishioners and servants, and as well as material other churchmen gave him, sent, it seems, an inscription copy of the dictionary to Feilberg in Jutland, another man who was, like him, a pastor and a dialectologist. Throughout Europe, pastors recorded information on dialect, local botany, archaeology (in the fullest sense) and folklore. The folkloric information they presented in their published works was no doubt partial, for pastors had their predilections for certain types of contacts and interests, just like anyone else. Such a personal bias in folklore collection can manifest itself in terms both of favoured sources and of favoured genres. But besides such personal bias, we can also imagine two sets of filters reduc- ing the amount of information recorded. For example, while there is no reason to believe that swearing was much less common in the nineteenth century than it is today, it is, unsurprisingly, the case that records of such oaths are conspicuous by their absence in the records churchmen preserved. The two filters here may have been the parishioners watching their speech in front of their minister, and secondly, the minister not recording such vulgarities. This is more or less likely to have been the case for other, less contentious genres and practices too. While the observer’s paradox and the self-censorship of the fieldworker are, of course, not confined to the interaction of a country parson and his parishioners, they are surely of relevance for much of the information we have been left by pastors interested in the vernacular.

63 T.L. Burton and K.K. Ruthven, “The English Dialect Dictionary and Dorset Usages Recorded by Notes and Queries”, Notes and Queries vol. 53, no. 4 (Dec 2006), pp. 415–417. 248 jonathan roper

Approximately one in ten of the initial membership of the Folklore Society were, upon its formation in 1878, church ministers. Via such organisations and via folklore books and articles, the ideas of Grimm and Thoms reached clergy engaged in daily contact with their parishioners and their folklore. A shining example of such an influence upon a church minister interested in folklore (among much else) is Sabine Baring-Gould, who published a vast number of works covering the full gamut from pot- boiler to serious inquiry often cast in a mythologizing form, was perhaps the leading Grimmian with a popular audience.64 Baring-Gould, who also managed to author several novels and “Onward Christian Soldiers” in his career, was merely the most outstanding example of a widespread phenomenon, the pastor-folklorist.

Rev. John Coker Egerton, Folklorist? A more typical example of the interaction of a pastor and the vernacular is provided by the Rev. John Coker Egerton, who served as Curate and latterly Rector of the parish of Burwash in Sussex between 1857 and 1888 (with the exception of the years 1860–1863). Egerton took a keen interest in the doings and sayings of his parishioners, which is evident in private journals. He used these journals for a series of articles on his parish and parishioners. While most of his fascinating and broad-ranging observations are good-humoured, not all of them were sympathetic—some were cast in terms of warning of what an unsuspecting country curate should be prepared for: I do not know that it is wise to be the chronicler of one’s own defeats, but possibly my confession may be useful in putting on guard some good country curate as inexperienced as I once was.65 It it no doubt significant that the audience for his remarks should explicitly include fellow clergymen, as networks of pastors formed both collectors and audiences of each other’s vernacular gleanings. Egerton’s articles were gathered together as a book Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways. These articles and the subsequent book represent his only folklore publication before his premature death in 1888.

64 See, for instance, Andrew Wawn, “The Grimms, the Kirk-Grims and Sabine Baring- Gould”, pp. 215–42 in G. Johnson, J. Walter and A. Wawn, eds, Constructing Nations, Recon- structing Myth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). 65 John Coker Egerton, Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways. Studies in the Wealden Formation of Humanity, (Third edition revised) (London: Methuen, 1924), p. 29. england—the land without folklore? 249

The editor of his journals has described Sussex Folks and Sussex Ways as “a remarkable work for its time, though possibly reflective of some of the preconceptions of contemporary folklorists”.66 In fact, Egerton was not aware of contemporary folklorists or their ‘preconceptions’. Though he was a member of the local antiquarian society, the Sussex Archaeological Society, he was not a member of the Folklore Society. At times, he seems on the verge of realising that something might in fact be folklore, existing in multiforms, on at least half-a-dozen occasions,67 but he did not have the comparative knowledge to make that breakthrough. For example, he retells a story of supposed country bumpkins outwitting city slickers by passing off a pumpkin as a mare’s egg. After relating the tale, he then says that he has heard the story elsewhere.68 Had he lived a little later, and been aware of contemporary folklore theory, he might have instead remarked that this is a variant of tale-type ATU1319. Nevertheless, Eger- ton’s book is a representative example of the books nowadays found on the ‘Topography’ shelves of secondhand libraries, which contain, albeit in somewhat scattered and filtered form, more genuine folklore than the books found on the ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’ shelves. Just as with other researchers, he had his personal biases, evident in his gravitation toward the older parishioners and verbal genres. Only superficial mentions of custom and belief, song, material culture or childlore can be found in his journals or published work. A thorough investigation of the prior life of Egerton’s work—or at least, that part of it we can now access, its transition from private journal to public writing, first in periodical and then in monograph form—would be instructive. Such a study of the additions and deletions from his private and public records of the parish might tell us much about vernacular culture and its representation in Egerton’s writings. But an examination of the afterlife of Egerton’s records of the folklore of Burwash is also instructive in revealing how the daily experience of pastors encountering the vernacular entered into the scattered corpus of publicly accessible information in a land without a folklore archive.

66 Roger Wells, ed., Victorian Village. The Diaries of the Reverend John Coker Egerton of Burwash 1857–1888 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992), p. 21. 67 Sussex Folks and Sussex Ways, pp. 20, 21, 26, 33, 123, 124. 68 Op. cit., pp. 18–20. 250 jonathan roper

The Afterlife of Sussex Folks and Sussex Ways Given the absence of a public folklore archive in England, journals and local newspapers, often of limited circulation such as Egerton’s choices of The Leisure Hour (an Anglican periodical) and the Sussex Advertiser, were the chief public repository for records of folklore. In fortunate circumstances, monographs might also appear (sometimes original, often, as in Egerton’s case, republications of more fugitive pieces). The folklore of Egerton’s parish was been relatively well-served as the title of his work, Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways, signals that there may be something of folkloric interest within. Many other works sitting on the topography shelves remain unmined for folklore due to their less suggestive titles. Both the twentieth-century folklorist Herbert Halbert and the present author have independently been through the pages of their copies of Sus- sex Folks and Sussex Ways and have marked out the rich stores of folklore it contains. Their large number of annotations shows that whatever mining has taken place of Egerton’s work by subsequent scholars, only a minority of his folkloric materials has been taken up. Egerton’s skilful representations of dialect have been one of the most successful aspects of his work. Indeed in Joseph Wright’s great English Dialect Dictionary, Sussex Folks and Sussex Ways is, remarkably, the largest source of quotations illustrating those headwords found in Sussex, after the local dialect dictionaries. Proverbs and proverbial phrases have been much less well-served. Only one proverb appears in Apperson’s folklore-friendly English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: A Historical Dictionary. Less surprisingly none appear in the literary-based Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs. Some of Eger- ton’s narratives (though fewer than half of the total) are featured in Kath- arine Briggs’ Dictionary of British Folk-tales in the English Language, but they do not make it into Baughman’s standard index of anglophone traditional narratives, and thus are not mentioned in the Aarne-Thompson or Aarne-Thompson-Uther international indices of folk narratives.69 And the contents of the book make limited appearances elsewhere—there are, for instance, only three references to it in the chief book on the folklore of Sussex for example.70

69 Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary (London: Henry Frowde, 1898–1905); George Latimer Apperson, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: A Historical Dictionary (London: J.M. Dent, 1929); F.P. Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Katharine Briggs, Dictionary of British Folk-tales in the English Language (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970–71). 70 Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Sussex (London: Batsford, 1973). england—the land without folklore? 251

The way in which Egerton’s work was not widely taken up into the corpus of accessible knowledge about English vernacular culture is far from atypical—in fact, as he put his private journal observations into the more accessible form of periodical articles, and because they were subsequently reprinted in the even more accessible form of a book, which was entertaining enough to go into three editions, many observers had their observations left in even greater obscurity.

The Land without Folklore? The relatively obscure afterlife of Egerton’s documentation of vernacular culture is typical for many of the books that might be shelved in the topography section of a bookshop or library. Yet the model of book and periodical publication does have its pros as well as its cons. While the data is naturally less well-organised and is also less accessible (in the sense that not available in a single place), the model is in another sense a more democratic one. Many books and some of the less obscure journals would be available in public libraries, and by the judicious use of their indices, where available, members of the public could access a great deal. Indeed the most analogous thing to national archive of folklore is to be found scattered amongst the pages of the journal Thoms founded, Notes and Queries, what we might call the Notes and Queries Folklore Corpus. ‘Folk- lore’ contributions, which were first requested at Thoms’ prompting in 1850, continued to be accepted until 1941, and during parts of that period there was also folkloric material contributed under other headings such as “Songs and Ballads” and “Proverbs and Phrases”. To give an idea of the relative importance of the corpus, we might simply note the arresting fact that Notes and Queries, where folklore was only one subject among many, published more English verbal charms than did Folklore, the dedicated journal of The Folklore Society. Nonetheless, while there is greater data available on nineteenth-century English vernacular culture than is often thought, especially to the dogged and fortunate researcher, there is still much less than is the case in many other European countries, where it was systematically documented. One thing that complicates the picture I have been painting here is that there were areas in which the nineteenth- and early twentieth- century English felt a national inferiority complex, areas where consequently greater cultural activism took place. For example, the famous quip that England was “the land without music” and the domination of the Viennese school were deeply felt by the final third of the nineteenth century, thus we should not be surprised that the Folk Song Society was 252 jonathan roper founded separately from the Folklore Society, that its members gathered substantial collections of songs and tunes, and that its present-day successor, the English Folk Dance and Song Society does show its national focus by means of the adjective ‘English’. Similarly, another area of cultural inferiority to neighbouring countries was felt to be that of cooking—the overshadowing continental neighbours being in this case not the Ger- mans (and Austrians), but the French. Thus it is not surprising that again we find the formation of another society intended to preserve and valorise native traditions, and which again bears the adjective ‘English’ in its title: the English Folk Cookery Association.71 But food and music were the exceptions that proved the rule in the documentation of English vernacular culture: there was little cultural-political motivation for the collection and cultivation of the majority of folklore genres and practices in England. Some consequences of this are that there are no dedicated monographs to, say, The English Folktale, or The Proverb in England, and that England is perhaps the only European country without a national folklore archive or dedicated academic unit for the study and documentation of its folklore. So was England the land without folklore? The (relative) failure of the folklore paradigm here, might lead some to think so. But the wildly uneven scraps and traces of otherwise vanished cultural practices to be found to be in a range of materials, not the least significant of which are the writings of pastors on the vernacular, suggests it would be unjustified to assume that there was no folklore to be collected. The complacency and cultural arrogance that allowed so much of it to go without record are not without interest in themselves. But their interest is as a historic formation. In other words, the scattered records of English folklore can be construed as metonymically standing in for what else could have been

71 The English Folk Cookery Association was founded by Florence White, one of the earliest people to work as a cookery journalist, in 1928. Its aim was to champion English traditional cookery, and it was intended to form a link between the Universal Cookery and Food Association (the predecessor of today’s Craft Guild of Chefs) and the Folklore Society. The former were not interested, but one sign of connection with the latter is the election of Alice Gomme, founder member of the Folklore Society, specialist in childlore and folk cookery, and the widow of folklorist Laurence Gomme, as the Association’s first President. The genesis of the Association being in a sense of humbled national pride is evident from passages such as the following from White’s autobiography: “It was perfectly sickening to hear nothing but [roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and Christmas pudding] . . . mentioned as England’s cooking.” A Fire in the Kitchen: The Autobiography of a Cook (London: J.M. Dent, 1938), p. 318. One significant outcome of the Association was the publication of a national collection of recipes from correspondents, Good Things in England (London: Jonathan Cape, 1932), that has been recycled by various subsequent writers. The Association did not survive the death of its founder in 1940. england—the land without folklore? 253 recorded had a different attitude been current historically, and had the institutional basis for folklore collection been more favourable. A fuller answer to the question of whether England was the land without folklore would need to focus not so much on figures such as Thoms whose chief role was as stirrers-up and animateurs (“Is that country [Warwickshire] still rich in fairy-lore?—and if so, will no-one undertake the pleasant task of collecting it?”),72 but upon the non-metropolitan firsthand document- ers of vernacular culture such as Coker Egerton, who did take on such collecting tasks, pleasant or otherwise. A survey of these scattered, sometimes beleaguered, sometimes uncomprehending figures is likely to confirm to us that England was not the land without folklore, it was the land that lacked folklorists.

72 Three Notelets on Shakespeare, p. 39.

An Imperialist Folklore? Establishing the Folk-Lore Society in London

Chris Wingfield and Chris Gosden

Introduction: Imperialist Archaeology and Folklore In a comparative paper published in 1984, the historian of archaeology, Bruce G. Trigger outlined what he called three “Alternative Archaeolo- gies: Nationalist, Colonialist and Imperialist”. These categories emerged from his examination of the “similarities and differences in the questions that prehistoric archaeologists ask” and in the “answers that they are predisposed to accept as reasonable in different parts of the world and under changing social conditions”.1 These characterisations do not necessarily imply the promotion of the ideologies associated with these terms, but rather that the framework for the concerns of each type of archaeology emerges from the geopolitical conditions of these three positions in the world system. Trigger’s three archaeologies were, he admitted, ideal types and as such could not explain the complexity of particular national research traditions.2 Nevertheless, his characterisations are useful and remain broadly descriptive of the frameworks in which archaeology has been practised in different times at different places, and the sorts of concerns and questions it has seemed sensible to address. What then of folklore? It has frequently been practised in the same times and places, and sometimes by the same people. Though folklore has been predominantly associated with romantic nationalism, so has prehistoric archaeology. Indeed, Trigger suggested that most traditions of archaeology have taken a nationalist form. Nevertheless, he has noted that alternative forms of the subject have taken shape in both the metropoles and peripheries of imperial worlds. Colonialist archaeologies were, he suggested, developed in colonies of settlement and focussed on the remains of indigenous peoples, with whom its practitioners assumed no bonds of kinship. Imperialist, or world-oriented archaeologies, take shape at

1 Bruce G. Trigger, “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist”, Man, new series 19, no. 3 (1984), p. 355. 2 Trigger, “Alternative Archaeologies”, p. 358. 256 chris wingfield and chris gosden the centre of empires, or large-scale economic systems, and assume an outward looking, global orientation. Trigger suggested that Britain from the 1850s was the location for the development of the first tradition of “imperialist” or “world-oriented” archaeology. He argued that: industrialization promoted by individual enterprise had greatly strengthened the middle class both economically and politically. By offering evidence that such progress was the continuation of what had been going on more slowly throughout human history, prehistoric archaeology bolstered the confidence of the British middle class and strengthened their pride in the leading role of Britain in this process.3 Given that folklore at this period involved many of the same people as prehistoric archaeology, it seems inevitable that it too should also have felt the imprint of these concerns and outlooks.

Anthropology, the Folk-Lore Society and the Pitt Rivers Museum Today, the familiar associations of folklore with the local, national and European, and anthropology with the foreign, overseas and remote, are increasingly unravelling. However, attempts to develop what Trigger might have called “imperialist” or “world-oriented” folklore in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Britain, meant that these associations were similarly challenged and uncertain at that time. The Pitt Rivers Museum of anthropology and world archaeology was established in Oxford in 1883–4, around half a decade after the Folk-Lore Society in London (1878). Many of those who were heavily involved in the museum’s history, and the development of its collections, also played key roles in the organisation of the Folk-Lore Society. Making sense of the collections still held by the Museum has meant trying to understand a time when folklore, anthropology and archaeology were closely overlapping domains.4 Recent research has focussed on the significance of the large proportion of objects in the museum from England (around fifteen per cent), given the widespread association of the museum with objects from the far corners of the world. Edward Burnett Tylor, who was appointed as the first lecturer in anthropology at Oxford when the museum was established, is widely recognised as the ‘father of anthropology’. However, Tylor was also a member of the

3 Bruce G. Trigger, “Anglo-American Archaeology”, World Archaeology 13 (1981), pp. 141–142. 4 As part of two major ESRC funded research projects: The Relational Museum 2002– 2006 and The Other Within: An Anthropology of Englishness 2006–2009. establishing the folk-lore society in london 257 council of the Folk-Lore Society from its foundation in 1878, and a Vice- President between 1880 and 1891. In a letter to his friend and colleague, the antiquarian John Evans, who had written to Tylor in February 1878 to say that he promised to join the newly formed Folk-Lore Society,5 Tylor wrote: I should have liked to see the Folk-Lore Society a department of the Anthro- pological Institute. It is satisfactory to hear of your joining it, as Andrew Lang is in exercise of mind fearing it will devote itself too much to newspaper cuttings about old women and hares and charms against cowpox.6 Tylor clearly did not think that folklore should content itself with these things. The fact that he thought it should have been a department of the Anthropological Institute is revealing. It was his attitude that the new subject of anthropology, which he did much to promote and establish, should be a unifying science. In the preface to his book Anthropology, he suggested that it should be a “science of Man and Civilization . . .” that “connects into a more manageable whole the scattered subjects of an ordinary education.”7 For folklore to be treated as one of these subjects in the 1870s, alongside prehistoric archaeology and physical anthropology, would mean re-grafting as a branch of anthropology something that had grown with roots elsewhere. Just as in the case of archaeology, which had hitherto concentrated largely on ‘national antiquities’, this would entail the transformation of an established romantic and essentially nationalist endeavour, into one that utilised the global vision provided by empire. After 1878 there were to be a number of further attempts, equally unsuccessful, to amalgamate the Folk-Lore Society with the Anthropological Institute: in 1893, 1898 and 1920.8 To continue the aboricultural metaphor, the ground from which British folk-lore had originally sprung, and in which its roots were established lay with the coining of the term ‘Folk- lore’ in English in the 1840s.

5 Evans to Tylor, February 18, 1878, Box 11:E3, Pitt Rivers Museum Archives: Tylor Papers. 6 Tylor to Evans, February 26, 1878, JE/B/1/17, Ashmolean Museum Archives: John Evans Papers. 7 Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civiliza- tion (London: Macmillan, 1881), p. xi. 8 Gillian Bennett, “Review Essay: Folklorists and Anthropologists”, Folklore 108 (1997), Jacqueline Simpson, “Update: Folklorists and Anthropologists”, Folklore 110 (1999). 258 chris wingfield and chris gosden

Trampling Railways and Fertile Soil: Antiquarianism and ‘Folk-lore’ in the 1840s The term ‘Folk-lore’ was famously coined in English in a letter to the Ath- enaeum by the antiquary William J. Thoms, writing as Ambrose Merton, in August 1846.9 He later suggested that this was a time when “the rail- road mania was at its height, and the iron horse was trampling under foot all our ancient landmarks, and putting to flight all the relics of our early popular mythology”.10 Significant in his phraseology, however, is the use of the possessive adjective “our”. It says a great deal about who he thought he and his readers were. A year earlier, fellow antiquary Thomas Wright, founder of the British Archaeological Association, had similarly written about the destructive effect of “Railways and other public works” in his concern for the preservation of “our native antiquities”.11 Again, Wright’s use of the possessive “our” suggests an ‘imagined’ national community.12 Thoms’ letter in the Athenaeum began: Your pages have so often given evidence of the interest which you take in what we in England designate as Popular Antiquities, or Popular Litera- ture (though by-the-bye it is more a Lore than a Literature, and would be most aptly described by a good Saxon compound, Folk-Lore—the Lore of the People)—that I am not without hopes of enlisting your aid in garnering the few ears which are remaining, scattered over that field from which our forefathers might have garnered a goodly crop.13 The rest of the letter makes clear that Thoms was inspired primarily by Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, and he hoped that any surviving Folk- lore would be preserved until “some James Grimm shall arise who shall do for the Mythology of the British Islands the good service which that profound antiquary and philologist has accomplished for the Mythology of Germany”.14 The letter even goes on to suggest that “The connexion

9 William Thoms, “Folk-Lore”, The Athenaeum August 29 (1846). 10 William Thoms, “The Story Of ‘Notes and Queries’”, Notes & Queries 5th Series VI no. July 1 (1876), p. 42. 11 P.J.A. Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archae- ologists in Victorian England 1838–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Thomas Wright, The Archaeological Album; or, Museum of National Antiquities (London: Chapman and Hall, 1845), pp. 1, 149. 12 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 13 Thoms, “Folk-Lore”, pp. 462–463. 14 Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (Göttingen: In der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1835). establishing the folk-lore society in london 259 between the FOLK-LORE of England . . . and that of Germany is so intimate that such communications will probably serve to enrich some future edition of Grimm’s Mythology.” (Thoms’ expectations of Anglo-German cooperation, which were not entirely fulfilled, are explored in Jonathan Roper’s chapter in this volume.) It seems important to situate the mid-nineteenth century origins of the English word and folklore movement in emulation of the achievements of German and northern European scholars in the wake of Romanticism. The major inspiration for the contemporary archaeological movement in Britain, spear-headed partly by Thomas Wright, came not from Germany, but from the National Museum in Copenhagen, where the three-age system (stone, bronze, and iron) had been worked out by its curator Chris- tian Jürgensen Thomsen.15 William J. Thoms was responsible, in 1849, for the first English translation of The Primaeval Antiquities of Denmark by a J.J.A. Worsaae, Thomsen’s assistant between 1838 and 1843.16 This had been published in Danish in 1843 and laid out a scientific basis for Thom- sen’s system. Just as Thoms had urged an application of the methods of Jacob Grimm to Britain, so he used this translation to apply Worsaae’s ideas to archaeological remains in England. A surge of Teutonism in mid-nineteenth-century Britain positioned the English, and to a certain extent also the British, as Anglo-Saxon and therefore as a predominantly Germanic and Teutonic nation.17 Thoms’ preference for “a good Saxon compound” clearly reflects this position, and it is clear that his primary intellectual inspirations, along with many of his contemporaries, came from a largely northern European, and therefore ‘Teutonic’ scholarly community. “Folk-lore”, as envisaged by Thoms, like contemporary archaeology, had the quality of what anthropologists might call a salvage paradigm, preserving by recording what was seen as disappearing from the countryside. Thoms’ involvement in archaeology and folklore, as different strands of antiquarian endeavour, make it clear that

15 Wright had also read Grimm and been inspired to take an interest in legend, folklore and sorcery. See Michael Welman Thompson, “Wright, Thomas (1810–1877)”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 16 Jens Jacob, Asmussen Worsaae and William John Thoms, The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, Translated from Danmarks Oldtid Oplyst Ved Oldsager Og Gravhøie and Applied to the Illustration of Similar Remains in England, by W.J. Thoms (London: John Henry Parker, 1849). 17 Frederic Everett Faverty, Matthew Arnold, the Ethnologist, Northwestern University Studies. Humanities Series; No. 27 (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1951), Peter Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2006). 260 chris wingfield and chris gosden he was interested in preserving tangible and intangible remains of the past in equal measure. Nevertheless, this mid-century climate of national salvage, promoting antiquarianism as an alternative to the established study of the Classics and Theology, was beginning to subside by the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By the time that the Folk-Lore Society was established in 1878, new subjects like anthropology increasingly cast themselves in a scientific mould, rather than a philological or antiquarian one. In addition, the emergence of the German Empire after 1871, with its own industrial and colonial ambitions, began to pose a threat to the comfortable hegemony of Victorian Britain. The desire to be Teutonic and see England and Britain as part of a northern European world began to wane at the same time as a new imperial mood began to assert itself. Neverthe- less, those such as Thoms, who were most comfortable with the project to record “our” “national” folklore continued to exert what has been called a “Thomsian heritage” in the new society.18

Founding the Folk-Lore Society in Imperial times Many of the key personnel of the ‘imperialist’ archaeology established in Britain in the 1850s and 60s, such John Lubbock, John Evans and E.B. Tylor, became key figures in the Anthropological Institute after it was established in 1871.19 They were closely allied with what has been described as the ‘anthropological’ school of British folk-lore.20 Trigger contrasted the orientation of this tradition in British archaeology to the nationalist tradition in Germany by suggesting that British archaeology increasingly understood change as brought by successive waves of migration, unlike Gustav Koss- inna in Germany who attributed national greatness to ethnic and cultural purity. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has similarly contrasted English folklore as the study of “ ‘survivals’ in a civilised society of behaviours that had their origins in earlier stages of cultural evolution. . . .” with “the Con- tinent” where “the term or its rough equivalents (Volkskunde, traditions populaires) referred to the purity of national culture preserved in rural backwaters outside the cosmopolitanizing reach of the metropole.”21 She

18 Gillian Bennett, “The Thomsian Heritage in the Folklore Society”, Journal of Folklore Research 33, no. 3 (1996). 19 George W. Stocking, “What’s in a Name? The Origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1837–71)”, Man, New Series 6, no. 3 (1971). 20 Richard Mercer Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1968). 21 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folklore’s Crisis”, The Journal of American Folklore 111, no. 441 (1998), p. 297. establishing the folk-lore society in london 261 has also noted that, as a consequence, folklore in England could include all peoples, while German Volkskunde tended not to.22 This difference in attitudes to ‘the other’: as something to be assimilated, rather than as an external source of danger, seems to lie at the heart of the differences between so-called ‘imperialist’ and ‘nationalist’ traditions of research. A ‘nationalist’ folklore might seek to exclude material not emanating from the nation in which it was practised, as outside its frame of concern, while an ‘imperialist’ folklore would tend to include folklore from many different places. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s characterisation of English folklore is only partially true, however, and this issue goes to the heart of a conflict that took place in the years surrounding the establishment of the Folk-lore society in 1878. The debate occurred between those representing the established ‘Thomsian’ tradition and those associated with the new ‘anthropological’ school. This approach to folklore, rather than being understood simply as benignly globally inclusive might be seen, in Trigger’s terms, as “bolster- ing the confidence of the middle class” by suggesting that their values and dominance were not merely a case of a locally established hierarchy, but global and universal. A global folklore might suggest that the British educated elite were the outcome towards which the history of the world had proceeded; the crest on the wave of progress. If there was Whig history, then this was definitely Whig folklore and anthropology, mapped onto a global stage.23 In February 1876, Eliza Gutch, writing as St. Swithin, made a suggestion for the formation of a Folk-Lore Society in the pages of Notes & Queries.24 This journal had been established as a consequence of Thoms’ letter to the Athenaeum, and Thoms had edited it between 1849 and 1872. The sort of folklore imagined by Gutch, however, was considerably more expansive than that of Thoms. Her letter began: I am not alone in thinking it high time that steps should be taken to form a society for collecting, arranging and printing all the scattered bits of folklore which we read of in books and hear of in the flesh. Such a society should not confine its labours to the folk-lore of our own land, but should have members and workers everywhere.25

22 Ibid., p. 300. 23 Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1931). 24 “In Memoriam: [Mrs.] Eliza Gutch, (1840–1931)”, Folklore 41, no. 3 (1930). 25 St. Swithin, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series no. 4 (1876). 262 chris wingfield and chris gosden

Responses to this suggestion did not immediately take up this international dimension. Many simply listed provincial newspapers that recorded local folklore, while one letter focused on the “decay of rural tradition” and noted: The schoolmaster who laughs at old traditions, and the railway that is rapidly mixing the population of the country, are sad destroyers of our local legends. Who, then, of newspaper editors will come to the rescue by opening their columns for this purpose . . . and who of clergymen, doctors, and antiquaries will take the trouble to seek for and write down such folk-lore as may yet be found lingering in our less-enlightened districts?26 A response from Thoms, under a pseudonym, expressed his support, suggesting a committee in London and local secretaries in “different parts of the country.”27 He also suggested that “Ladies should be specially invited to take part in the work, who, in their kindly ministrations in the cottages of their poorer neighbours, must often come across traces of old world customs and beliefs.” Thoms’ suggestion that the committee might be busy selecting “what is not already recorded by Brand and his editors” makes it clear that his vision is for a society predominantly involved in investigating England and Britain, reasserting a national frame of concern. Gutch’s reply pointed out that she differed from Thoms “essentially as to the object the Society should have in view” emphasising her intention that the Society, rather than simply printing examples of English folklore, should gather: together of all folk-lore, whether English or foreign, whether known to Brand or, if I say so, brand-new to literature, the classifying of materials, and the publication of the result in installments with as much learned note and comment as may be obtainable.28 This letter makes it clear that Gutch was interested not just in preservation but in advancing the “study of comparative folk-lore”. Another contributor to the debate with a different agenda suggested that “A special department might be constituted for the collection and recording of Celtic folk-lore”.29 Thomas Satchell noted that rather than trying to publish bibliographies of different countries independently, a typological approach should instead be taken, classifying “according to

26 H. Bower, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series, no. IV (1876). 27 An Old Folk-Lorist, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series no. 8 (1876). 28 Swithin, “Folk-Lore Society”. 29 David Fitzgerald, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series, no. 6 (1876). establishing the folk-lore society in london 263 subject (‘Days and Seasons’, ‘Spells and Charms’, &c.), and to issue in fasciculi with a continuous pagination, notes under each heading, duly labelled, in MR. SKEAT’S phrase, ‘after the manner of the minerologist, with the place of collection’ ”.30 This analogy is significant, suggesting the intellectual inspiration of this new generation of folklorists came, not from German philology, but from the methods of the natural sciences. The replacement of a national focus in collection and publication with a typological and therefore more global one, has many parallels in the manner in which Pitt Rivers organised his collection of objects from the 1850s onwards. A Mr Fishwick was concerned that “To make such a society a success its working committee must not consist exclusively of Londoners, or such as can attend meetings in the metropolis.”31 Thoms, however, in his response insisted that the Society have a permanent headquarters in London, and also that the objects of the society should be “the gathering together the relics of our own folk-lore, and eventually the analogous folk-lore of other countries.”32 It is clear that his interest was still primarily in preserving “our own folk-lore” and only later in ambitious projects of global comparison. Meanwhile, Gutch revealing more of her global interests, drew attention to a paragraph from the Graphic on 30 December 1876, which suggested that the Adelaide government was investigating the folk-lore of Australia by circulating a questionnaire at the suggestion of Dr Bleek “who devoted so much of his time to the legends of South Africa.”33 At this stage there seem to have been many different imaginings as to the shape that the proposed Folk-lore society should take. In January 1878, G.L. Gomme announced the formation of the Society, of which he would serve as secretary, having “for its object the collecting and printing the fast-fading relics of our popular fictions and traditions, legendary ballads, local proverbial sayings, old customs and superstitions.”34 A further sentence, perhaps a compromise, added “It is intended to include in the field of the society’s labours the folk-lore of aboriginal people.” This makes it clear that the global and comparative study of folklore was taking second place in the new society to the continuing national preservationist and

30 Thomas Satchell, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series, no. 6 (1876). 31 H. Fishwick, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series, no. 6 (1876). 32 William J. Thoms, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series, no. 8 (1877). 33 St. Swithin, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series no. 7 (1877). 34 G. Laurence Gomme, “Folk-Lore Society”, Notes & Queries Fifth Series no. 9 (1878). 264 chris wingfield and chris gosden salvage urge. However the debate was not to end there, but was to rumble on for many years in the early publications of the newly formed Society.

The New Society: Contrasting Visions The Folk-lore Record, was first published by the society in 1878 with the motto alter et idem—other and the same. The rules published in the first issue included a statement slightly altered from the earlier prospectus: The Folk-Lore Society has for its object the preservation and publication of Popular Traditions, Legendary Ballads, Local Proverbial Sayings, Super- stitions and Old Customs (British and foreign), and all subjects relating to them.35 Nevertheless a preface in that issue by Thoms referred to Folk-lore as a department of “literary enquiry” and once again stressed the importance of Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie and a particular focus on England.36 However, the preface to volume two in 1879, was by Andrew Lang and took a different tack. This laid out Lang’s vision for a global and comparative approach to Folk-lore. It began, “The science of Folk-Lore examines the things that are the oldest, and most permanent, and most widely distributed, in human institutions” and suggested that: we find the great mass of the more essential popular customs and beliefs existing in almost identical shape, among peoples modern and ancient, peoples barbarous and civilized, peoples of eastern and western hemispheres, and of the Australian continent.37 In referring to analogies in Africa and Australia, to the Ancient Greek practice of daubing earth onto the bodies of initiates to the Dionysiac mysteries, Lang asked: Will any one say that the dirty practice of the Greeks was an invention of their own civilisation and that black fellows and negroes retain this, and not much else, from a culture which they once shared with the Aryans? Or is it probable that a rite, originally savage, was not discarded by the Greeks as they passed from savagery to civilisation?38 Making a direct analogy to the methods of prehistoric archaeology, Lang suggested:

35 “The Folk-Lore Society. Rules”, The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), p. vii. 36 William J. Thoms, “The Preface”, The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), p. xiii. 37 A. Lang, “Preface”, The Folk-Lore Record 2 (1879), pp. i–ii. 38 Ibid. establishing the folk-lore society in london 265

Now when we find widely and evenly distributed on the earth’s surface the rude flint tools of men, we regard these as the oldest examples of human skill. Are we not equally justified in regarding widely and evenly distributed beliefs in ghosts, kelpies, fairies, wild women of the forests (which are precisely the same in Brittany as in New Caledonia), as among the oldest examples of the working of human fancy? And, to go a step further, is not the nursery-tale which you find among Celts, Germans, Basques, Bechuanas, Aztecs, and Egyptians, obviously a relic of human imagination, constructed in an age when people now civilised were in the same intellectual condition as people still savage?39 Extending the parallel between fairy tales and arrow heads, Lang argued that “I conceive that they are savage and early in character, that in style and type of incident they bear the marks of savage fancy as clearly as the arrow-head bears the marks of the rude stone hammer.” It is clear that for Lang, folklore was not a “department of literary enquiry”, but rather a department of archaeological or anthropological enquiry, and as such had a global and world-historical, rather than local and national significance. The subject matter of folklore was not to be understood in the terms of philology, but rather as analogous to the remains of stone tools archaeologists had discovered distributed across the globe. Such archaeological metaphors were not unique to Lang, and an article in The Folk-Lore Record the following year drew on the model of numismatics as a comparative discipline, suggesting that proverbs might be studied as “coins of wisdom”.40 Lang noted that: When we want to study flint weapons, palaeolithic or neolithic, we visit the museums and easily find great store of these articles. But it is not quite so easy to study fairy-lore. One may recommend the Red Indian legends collected by Schoolcraft, the Zulu tales of Callaway, the New Zealand legends in Sir George Grey’s works, the publications of Bleek, and of the South African Folk-Lore society. The choice of these examples, all with the exception of Schoolcraft drawn from British colonial possessions, make it clear that Lang’s vision of the world was informed by an understanding that placed him at the centre of a global empire. However, the examples of ethnic groups chosen in earlier passages included Basques, Germans, Aztecs and Egyptians, suggesting that Lang’s global and comparative outlook was not necessarily

39 Ibid., p. iii. 40 James Long, “Proverbs: English and Keltic with the Eastern Relations”, The Folk-Lore Record 3, no. 1 (1880), p. 57. 266 chris wingfield and chris gosden constrained by the reach of British imperial possessions. Lang laid out his global historical vision of folk-lore as follows: Man started from a savage origin, in a savage state he gave his fancy free play, and devised many curious and cumbrous rites. As he rose to civilisation he never wholly laid aside anything he had once acquired. His barbarous legends were polished into epics and national traditions, his rude ritual became the basis of a more polished cult. But all men did not advance with equal rapidity, and the peasant class retained something very much nearer the old savage legends than the cultivated and elaborate myths. Lang finished his preface by stating that “The purpose of this hurried sketch will have been fulfilled if it induces students of folk-lore to make anthropology part of their method . . . Folk-lore is the study of survivals, and possibly there is no stage of human experience, however early and incomplete, from which something in our institutions does not still survive.” This definition of Folk-lore as the study of “survivals” is ironic given the origins of the term in a concern about things that might not survive. Nevertheless, it is also significant given the centrality that the investigation of ‘survivals’ takes in Tylor’s 1871 book Primitive Culture as a means of discovering the remote past. Lang was a follower of Tylor, who Dorson in his history of British Folk-lore calls “the godfather of British anthropological folk-lore”, of which Lang emerged as a leader.41 The passages above make clear that he had adopted this leadership position by the time the Folk-Lore Society had published its second issue, clearly laying out his manifesto. The letter from Tylor to John Evans, quoted above, also suggests that Lang was lobbying behind the scenes and attempting to recruit those he felt would support his position in the new society.

A Metropolitan Concern Lang’s assertion that folklore was the study of ‘survivals’ was not to go unchallenged in the pages of the Folk-lore Record. G.L. Gomme, Secretary of the new society, suggested in The Folk-lore Journal of September 1884 that: It seems a little curious that after six years of existence for the Folk-Lore Society that we should not yet have satisfactorily settled the proper meaning of the term “Folk-Lore.” Mr. Lang has over and over again protested against its misuse, but I think that even his definition of it as a study of survivals

41 Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History. establishing the folk-lore society in london 267

does not comprehend all the functions that the science of folk-lore properly includes.42 This prompted a large number of responses, and the complexity of this debate deserves to be examined in detail elsewhere. Nevertheless, the first response, and that to which many subsequently responded, was by Alfred Nutt, one of the key supporters of Lang’s comparative ‘anthropological’ approach to folk-lore. Nutt proposed a definition of Folk-Lore as “anthropology dealing with primitive man”.43 By ‘primitive’ he meant those for whom all knowledge was “empirical and traditional”. In contrast he suggested to his readers that “We are ‘civilised men’ ” since “the whole tendency of our education has been to replace in our minds the impressions derived from our senses and the facts gathered from folk-tradition”.44 Nutt’s use of the terms “we” and “our” suggests that while the new approach to folklore might not operate along the nationalist and romantic grounds outlined by Thoms, it was no less a discourse of identity. The focus of this, however, was not the nation, but on the abstract notion of ‘civilisation’. Nutt emphasised that “the vast majority of our fellows are in this sense not civilised” and with these he included “the Murri, the Maori, the Aztec” as well as “the Dor- setshire hind”. This inclusion of the rural English along with indigenous people from other parts of the world, suggests that civilisation was by no means understood as the possession of a whole nation, but was felt to be formed by the effect of a certain type of education. It is clear from the perspectives expressed in Lang’s 1879 preface that folklore, for him, was a metropolitan concern. He was looking out from a position of ‘civilisation’ at the centre, to consider the history of the world, and the ‘survival’ of remnants from the past. However there is a further sense in which the Folk-Lore Society was metropolitan, beyond the familiar dichotomy of metropole/colony in post-colonial studies.45 The Folk-Lore Society operated literally in a metropolis, founded and established at Thoms’ insistence in London, and this enabled not only Australia and Africa to be imagined as peripheral, but also the rural poor of England. Members of The Folk-Lore Society did not assert a metropolitan position for the whole of Britain or even England, but only really for

42 G.G. Gomme, “Notes and Queries: Folk-Lore Terminology”, The Folk-Lore Journal 2, no. 9 (1884), p. 285. 43 Alfred Nutt, “Folk-Lore Terminology”, The Folk-Lore Journal 2, no. 10 (1884), p. 311. 44 Ibid, pp. 311–312. 45 Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Oxford: Polity, 2002). 268 chris wingfield and chris gosden

N. America Asia Australia Africa Rest of Europe

Rest of British Isles London

Rest of England Figure 1. Membership of the Folk-Lore Society in 1881, by place of residence.

London, and its predominantly urban operation is reflected in the early membership lists of the society. In its Third Annual Report in 1881, the Folk-Lore Society attempted an analysis of its membership list.46 This was published in The Folk- lore Record and lists 284 members (See Figure 1). While 11 members are recorded in North America and 10 in Asia (7 in India), only 1 member is recorded for both Africa and Australia. A further 15 are recorded from continental Europe (5 in both France and Germany) leaving 246, around 87%, from the British Isles. Of these 16 are listed in Scotland, 5 in Ireland, 4 in Wales and 1 in Guernsey, but 220, over three-quarters of all members came from England. Of these 100 are recorded with London addresses, accounting for 45% of the members from England, and over a third of all members. English members were otherwise fairly evenly distributed and the only counties with more than ten members were Yorkshire with 19 (3 more than Scotland), and Lancaster with 11. Membership of the Folk-Lore Society in 1881 was far from evenly distributed across either

46 “The Folk-Lore Society. Third Annual Report of the Council”, The Folk-Lore Record 4 (1881). establishing the folk-lore society in london 269

Britain, or the British Empire, and the concentration of its meetings and other operations in London perhaps makes this unsurprising. Neverthe- less, the conclusion reached in the report points to members living away from London, suggesting that: These facts show that there should be means at the disposal of the Council to set about the work of collecting the last remnants of English folk-lore. It is believed by some that there still exist in the cottage homes of Great Britain and Ireland many a folk-tale and many a superstition and popular custom that have not yet found their way into literature. It is to these that the Council would direct the particular attention of Members of the Society and others.47 This statement appears to reinforce the ‘Thomsian’ cause, but also seems to involve the London members directing those living away from the metropolis to collect their local folk-lore.48

Early Publications of the Folk-Lore Society The same report nevertheless retained the founding tension of the Folk- Lore Society and ended by noting that: With reference to the Folk-Lore of other countries, whether savage or civilised, the Council have noticed that there seems to be greatly increased attention given to the subject.49 One way of assessing this “increased attention” is to interrogate the peri- odicals of The Folk-Lore Society during its first decade, since these were closely related to presentations at society meetings, and as such may be used as an indicator of matters of concern for members of the society. A rough categorisation of papers published in the Folk-lore Record between 1878 and 1882, and then the Folk-lore Journal from 1882 to 1887, suggests that in publication as well as membership, the society continued to be skewed towards the British Isles. Nevertheless areas outside the Brit- ish Isles certainly received more attention than the membership of the society might suggest, perhaps showing the influence of Lang’s appeals for a global and comparative folklore. During its first decade the society published 236 papers by 94 authors (See Figure 2).50 Over half of these

47 Ibid., p. 206. 48 John Ashton, “Beyond Survivalism: Regional Folkloristics in Late-Victorian England”, Folklore 108 (1997). 49 “The Folk-Lore Society. Third Annual Report of the Council”. 50 Only 15 of these 96 authors were female. 270 chris wingfield and chris gosden

No Location England

N. America

Asia

Rest of British Isles

Africa

Rest of Europe Figure 2. Papers published by the Folk-Society by major source location mentioned in the text. dealt with European subjects, and around a quarter of published papers concerned subjects from Asia, North America, and Africa with over half of these extra-European papers concerning Asia. Around three-quarters of the European papers concerned the British Isles. Of these, over half concerned England, just under a quarter concerned Ireland, just under a fifth Scotland, and around a twentieth Wales. Of the English papers, around a quarter were not county specific, and the two counties with the most papers relating to them were Cornwall and Warwickshire. These figures are very approximate, which is why fractions have been used rather than percentages, but it should be clear that the published concerns of the Folk-Lore Society in geographical terms hardly reflected the residence of its members (Compare Figure 1 & 2). Areas outside of the British Isles, as well as remoter areas within them such as Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall, are heavily over-represented in the publications of the society when compared to the places of residence of its members. The pattern of publications is nevertheless skewed towards the British Isles, suggesting that the global comparative folklore promoted by Lang was not fully embraced in the publications of the new society. The tension between the national and world-oriented frames of concern, which establishing the folk-lore society in london 271 lay at the heart of debates around the founding of the Folk-Lore Society, appear to have been ongoing during its first decade.

Imperial Nationalism? The subjects discussed at Folk-Lore Society meetings and published in its journals, did not only reflect the founding tension between folklore’s national ‘Thomsian’ heritage and Lang’s world historically oriented ‘Tylo- rian’ project. There were also other frameworks informing published contributions which introduced additional tensions. These included an Indo-European framework, promoted by Max Müller, and based on philological classification, as well as an increasingly widespread romantic enthusiasm for Celtic material. Particular individuals seem to have been pulled in these various directions, either leaving the tensions between their various interests unresolved, or else in attempting to establish a syn- thesis. Writing in the third volume of the Folk-Lore Record, following the polemical prefaces by Thoms and Lang in the previous two volumes, was one such figure, a former Church Missionary Society missionary The Rev. James Long. Long had 30 years experience in India during which he had become famous for his stance against the abuses of indigo planters. His paper on “Proverbs: English and Keltic with their Eastern Relations” had originally been read at a meeting of the Society in April 1880.51 Long was evidently concerned with “how to improve the common people” and saw proverbs as a key to understanding and as “valuable accessories to the correct delineation of national manner and opinions.” Having collected proverbs in India, Long showed an additional interest in English proverbs on his return, but suggested that existing collections are “defi- cient in classification” since they had not been compared to “Eastern or Slav nations, and thereby gaining a clue to their origin and affinities.” Long made a two stranded argument using both philological and biological parallels. He suggested that just as the English language was best understood in the light of comparative philology, and human anatomy was aided by the comparative anatomy of mammals, so English proverbs would best be understood through their comparative relations. Long’s argument suggested that global comparison did not necessarily mean the decline of interest in the peculiar traditions of the English, but involved setting

51 Long, “Proverbs: English and Keltic with the Eastern Relations”. 272 chris wingfield and chris gosden

England in wider context, and to do this he drew attention to what Trigger would have called England’s position in the modern world system: England is an empire on which the sun never sets, hence insular notions do not become her; we must rise from Great Britain to the dignity of the Greater Britain. England is an island, and therefore has insular tendencies, but science has made the ocean a connecting link and not a line of separation; India for instance by sea is more accessible to London than Siberia is by land from St. Petersburg. Let this Society then, having its seat in a cosmopolitan city, rise to the dignity of its situation by viewing English Folk-Lore in its affinities with that of other nations and especially Eastern ones.52 Leaving aside Long’s conflations of England and Britain, it is clear that his desire to embrace a wider comparative folklore was related not only to his experience of living and working in another part of the empire, but also grew out of an understanding of the global position of the British empire, and London’s status as a cosmopolitan city. Nevertheless, his final clause, emphasising “Eastern” comparisons, draws attention to his sympathy for Indo-European comparison. He continued by arguing that: Few people are cognisant of the fact that the Brahman of Benares, the Priest of Moscow, and the Dean of Westminster speak a language radically the same, and mutually understood by their common ancestry when they lived together 3,000 years ago on the plains of Central Asia, their primitive residence.53 Not only was Long concerned with Indo-European comparison, but he was also influenced by increased enthusiasms for Celtic culture, and was keen to argue against the notion that the English were essentially Anglo- Saxon. For Long a hybrid identity drawing on a range of racial and cultural progenitors was strongly related to the imperial vocation of the English in his times. He argued that: The term Anglo-Saxon race is therefore now an inappropriate one, for Kelt, Dane, and Roman contributed as much as Saxon to build up the present imperial race and the élan exhibited by the English in their Colonial and Indian Empire could never have been communicated by the solid but slow Saxon . . .54 Long seems to have been particularly Catholic in his influences, drawing on a range of strands of thought in folklore at the time; from an interest

52 Ibid., pp. 59–60. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., pp. 60–61. establishing the folk-lore society in london 273 in the peculiarities of English folklore, to an interest in Celtic heritage, to Müller’s Indo-European comparativism, to Lang’s global comparative folklore. Nevertheless his argument is illustrative of Trigger’s assertion that there is a connection between the position of a state in the world system, and the questions that it seems reasonable to ask.

Conclusions Trigger’s characterisations of “nationalist, imperialist and colonialist” as ideal types in relation to the questions that archaeologists have asked are clearly not irrelevant to the related history of folklore. An ‘imperialist’ or world-oriented approach was strongly promoted by one party in debates surrounding the establishment of The Folk-lore Society, and this was explicitly related in the accounts of Lang and Long to the contemporary practice of archaeology. The connection between global comparison and Britain’s imperial vocation was even addressed by Long.55 Neverthe- less the publication record of the Folk-Lore Society in its first decade suggests that this attempt to re-orient the practice of folklore in Britain was never entirely successful. This is also highlighted by the repeated failure of attempts to amalgamate the Folk-Lore Society with the Anthropological Institute.56 That certain people in Britain during the last quarter of the twentieth century felt that the most appropriate framework for approach- ing folklore was a world-historical one, did not mean that this approach was adopted by everyone. The continuation of a more nationally framed ‘Thomsian’ approach, as well as the diversity of approaches pursued by regionally based members of the society, meant that the Folk-Lore Society remained poised somewhere between the two ideal types suggested by Trigger, at least during its first decade.57 Recent reassessments of Trigger’s agenda-setting article in archaeology, have suggested that in archaeology as well as folklore, strands of nationalism continued to inform archaeological practice at most times and places.58 Nevertheless this should not mean that episodes when a

55 Ibid. 56 Bennett, “Review Essay: Folklorists and Anthropologists”; Simpson, “Update: Folklor- ists and Anthropologists”. 57 Bennett, “The Thomsian Heritage in the Folklore Society”; Ashton, “Beyond Survival- ism: Regional Folkloristics in Late-Victorian England”. 58 Margarita Dîaz-Andreu, A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nation- alism, Colonialism, and the Past, Oxford Studies in the History of Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 11. 274 chris wingfield and chris gosden world-oriented approach was promoted strongly should be ignored. It is undoubtedly significant that these occurred at the height of Britain’s empire, and again in the USA during the second half of the twentieth century. It is noteworthy also that those who promoted a world-oriented view in Britain were recruited as intellectual ancestors by those who set out a similar approach in North America. The slightly one-sided portraits of British folklore, given by North American writers such as Dorson and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, emphasising the global and comparative approach, suggest something of this process of recruitment.59 Nevertheless, in a post-imperial Europe, as well as a world where the global hegemony of the USA looks increasingly precarious, it may still be that it is these episodes of imperial thinking which have the most to offer us today. The expansion and contraction of imperial power establishes certain symmetries, and questions of global comparison and history that were asked during imperial expansion have a peculiar sort of relevance in nations now populated by many with origins in former imperial possessions.60 While we might disagree about the inevitable teleology of particular schemes of progress, it may be that a folk-lore of “old women and hares and charms against cowpox” to use Tylor’s words, would be as problematic in post-imperial cosmopolitan London, as some felt it to be during the height of empire.

59 Richard M. Dorson, “Folklore Studies in England”, The Journal of American Folklore 74, no. 294 (1961); Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folk- lore’s Crisis”. 60 Bill Schwarz, The Expansion of England: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History (London: Routledge, 1996); John Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan, 1883). The Ballad Revival and National Literature: Textual Authority and the Invention of Tradition

David Atkinson

Francis James Child and the “Popular” Ballad In an encyclopaedia article on “ballad poetry” first published in 1874, the great English-language ballad editor Francis James Child surveyed (with a very substantial bibliography) the ballad literature of a range of European nations.1 For Child, the identification of the ballad genre with the original, native poetry of a nation or people—providing a cultural foundation to the political sense of national identity that was emerging across Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—could be explained by the peculiar social circumstances that had brought what he called the “popular” ballad into being: “The condition of society in which a truly national or popular poetry appears explains the character of such poetry. It is a condition in which the people are not divided by political organization and book-culture into markedly distinct classes, in which consequently there is such community of ideas and feelings that the whole people form an individual.”2 At the end of the same article, Child reiterated: “The genuine popular ballad had its rise in a time when the distinctions since brought about by education and other circumstances had practically no existence.”3 The popular ballads represent “an expression of the mind and heart of the people as an individual, and never of the personality of individual men”.4

1 Francis J. Child, “ ‘Ballad Poetry’, Johnson’s Universal Cyclopædia, 1900”, Journal of Folk- lore Research, 31 (1994), pp. 214–22. 2 Child, “Ballad Poetry”, p. 214. Child’s thinking is discussed in Sigrid Rieuwerts, “ ‘The Genuine Ballads of the People’: F.J. Child and the Ballad Cause”, Journal of Folk- lore Research, 31 (1994), pp. 1–34; Sigrid Rieuwerts, “From Percy to Child: The ‘Popular Ballad’ as ‘a distinct and very important species of poetry’ ”, in Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context, ed. by James Porter, Proceedings of the 23rd International Ballad Conference of the Commission for Folk Poetry (Société Internation- ale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore), University of California, Los Angeles, June 21–24, 1993 (Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology & Systematic Musicology, UCLA, 1995), pp. 13–20; Sigrid Rieuwerts, “The Folk-Ballad: The Illegitimate Child of the Popular Bal- lad”, Journal of Folklore Research, 33 (1996), pp. 221–26. 3 Child, “Ballad Poetry”, p. 218. 4 Child, “Ballad Poetry”, p. 214. 276 david atkinson

Although he specifically disavowed communal authorship—“a man and not a people has composed them” (a point apparently overlooked by some of his successors)—within this shared cultural environment, “the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous”.5 This historical theory gave Child the title for his English and Scot- tish Popular Ballads (1882–98).6 The ideas can no doubt be traced to the Germanic philological tradition of Herder, Bürger, and the brothers Grimm.7 They are prefigured, too, in the earlier English and Scottish ballad publications of Thomas Percy and William Motherwell, respectively, which both sought to present ballads as examples of the ancient indigenous literature of a nation or a people, and which were important influences on Child. Thus the dedication to Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) described the ballads as “effusions of nature, shewing the first efforts of ancient genius”;8 while Motherwell in the Introduction to Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern (1827) wrote of Scottish balladry as “that body of poetry which has inwoven itself with the feelings and passions of the people, and which shadows forth as it were an actual embodiment of their Universal mind, and of its intellectual and moral tendencies”.9 Later, too, the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp continued to speak in remarkably similar terms (although there is no need to posit any direct connection between his thinking and that of Child): “Now, in Folk-poetry, Folk-ballad, Folk-tale, and Folk-song, we are dealing with the output of this earlier period, when the unit was not the individual, but the community; we are dealing with the product of a people as yet undivided into a lettered and an unlettered class. We are thinking of a time when in a common atmosphere of ignorance, so far as book lore is concerned, one habit of thought and one standard of action animated every member from Prince to Plough-boy.”10

5 Child, “Ballad Poetry”, p. 214. 6 The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. by Francis James Child, 5 vols (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882–98). 7 Rieuwerts, “The Genuine Ballads of the People”, p. 20; “The Folk-Ballad”, pp. 221–22. 8 [Thomas Percy], Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, consisting of old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our earlier poets (chiefly of the lyric kind), together with some few of later date, 3 vols (London: J. Dodsley, 1765), I, vi. The dedication was written for Percy by Samuel Johnson. 9 William Motherwell, Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern, with an historical introduction and notes (Glasgow: John Wylie, 1827), p. v. 10 London, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Cecil J. Sharp MSS, Miscellaneous material, CJS/5/3, Lecture on Folk Songs from Somerset, Hampstead, March 1905, p. 4. A the ballad revival and national literature 277

Yet the fact remains that, for the entire period from which the English- language ballads are known, Child’s description of the necessary condition of society for the popular ballad to flourish is quite clearly nonsense. To quote just a single modern study of England in the thirteenth century, the century of “Judas” (Child 23), the very earliest piece in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads: “English society was an amalgam of local communities as various as the types of soil from which they extracted a living, which were incorporated into a single national history only by the process of legal definition.”11 No one could seriously imagine post-Conquest England as having been “not divided by political organization and book- culture into markedly distinct classes”, or as having represented “a time when the distinctions since brought about by education and other circumstances had practically no existence”. Child, one suspects, did not really have in mind England or lowland Scotland of the Christian era at all. Rather, his historical ideas belong to a consciously idealised prehistory. In fact, a whole raft of Enlightenment and Romantic ideas, to which it is quite impossible to do justice here, concerning primitivism, a pre-societal “golden age”, the “noble savage”, and so forth, combined with early investigations into the origin of language, to posit a “natural” primitive state in which poetry and song would flourish. Herder in particular asserted the essentially musical and poetical nature of early human language, which had then become refined into the most ancient poetry and music.12 This notion was enthusiastically incorporated into the aesthetic theory of the Romantics, enabling them in turn to identify native (read “national”) lyric genres—epic poetry, ballad, folk song— with the remnants of a pure and original form of aesthetic expression. It has been observed that Romantic communalist theories of the origins of European ballads and epics posit (usually implicitly rather than explicitly) a state of society that would equate, if anything, with Germanic tribes of the migration period, or with pre-Christian Celtic peoples outside of the Roman sphere of influence.13 But Child’s Rousseauesque condition of society, it seems safe to assume, belongs not so much to the traceable history

few years later, Sharp’s most influential work, English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions (1907), situates folk song rather less fancifully in the rural environment of his own day. 11 Alan Harding, England in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 322. 12 Helene M. Kastinger Riley, “Some German Theories on the Origin of Language from Herder to Wagner”, Modern Language Review, 74 (1979), pp. 617–32. 13 Philip E. Bennett and Richard Firth Green, “Introduction”, in The Singer and the Scribe: European Ballad Traditions and European Ballad Cultures, ed. by Philip E. Bennett 278 david atkinson of the European ballad, which is generally accepted as emerging around the fifteenth century, as to the Romantic imagination.14 Nevertheless, in their emphasis on the essential anonymity of ballad texts within a shared cultural environment, there is still a sense in which Child’s formulations can be perceived as having at least a figurative truth. For it is really only some time after the beginning of the Romantic ballad revival that the attribution of the English-language ballads to specific, individual, named sources started to become common practice in ballad publications. The editors of early key works that signalled the Roman- tic upsurge of interest in national ballad traditions—Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, or Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03)—were quite comfortable with the alternative method of collating multiple texts into a composite, “ideal” form. It is certainly true that some of the names of individual contributors can be traced in extant collectors’ manuscripts from this time, and just occasionally in published ballad collections, the naming of Mrs Brown of Falkland as a primary source in Robert Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs (1806) being a prime example. In general, though, the ballads offered to the reading public of nineteenth-century England or Scotland were mostly presented as being essentially anonymous productions. This practice of publishing ballads as anonymous literature, moreover, squared well with the desire to present them as the representative, collective productions of a nation or people, rather than as the personal efforts of an identified individual. Indeed, editorial collation was by no means confined to English-language balladry: witness James Macpher- son’s “reconstruction” of Ossian (the collective title conventionally used to denote Macpherson’s several publications purporting to be translations from ancient Gaelic poetry), and Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala, as just two examples of a vogue for what has been described as “creative editing” in the preparation of national collections of ballad and epic poetry across eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe.15 It is only later that the names of the contributors started to become routinely and firmly and Richard Firth Green, Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 75 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 5–11 (p. 8). 14 Dianne Dugaw, “Francis Child, Cecil Sharp, and the Legacy of the Pastoral in Folk- song Study”, Folklore Historian, 14 (1997), pp. 7–12, links Child’s imagined golden age with the ideology of the literary pastoral. 15 J.J. Dias Marques, “The Creative Editing of Traditional Ballads”, in From “Wunder- horn” to the Internet: Perspectives on Conceptions of “Folk Song” and the Editing of Tradi- tional Songs, ed. by Eckhard John and Tobeas Widmaier, BASIS, vol. 6 (Trier: WVT, 2010), pp. 180–89. the ballad revival and national literature 279 attached to the individual items. Thus Child gives this information wher- ever possible in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The ballads from the Greig-Duncan collection from north-east Scotland published in Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs (1925) are routinely ascribed to their sources. The same sort of information is provided with Sabine Baring-Gould’s published folk song collections from south-west England, and with Cecil Sharp’s Folk Songs from Somerset (1904–09). Albeit rather gradually, “the discovery of the people”, in Peter Burke’s phrase, became integral to the publications of the folk song revival, as the sources of the individual items began to emerge from the anonymous mass as historically situated, individuated beings.16

Textual Authority and Variance Prior to this, there are, of course, some ballads that can be associated with known authors. Especially in the earlier days of the broadside trade, a fair proportion of ballads, especially those on religious subjects, were the work of authors who are identified either by name or (more often) initials, even if most of them remain obscure to the modern reader.17 By the seventeenth century, however, and especially following the Restoration, the vast majority of broadsides were being published anonymously.18 The major exceptions were the work of a small number of ballad hacks who seem to have had a popular following, or notoriety: among them, William Elderton, Thomas Deloney, Martin Parker, Laurence Price. Even so, these authors’ names have not usually remained attached to the ballads when they have continued in circulation, either in print or among singers. For example, in the mid-seventeenth century, the earliest known broadside copy of “James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)” (Child 243 A) appeared under the title “A Warning for Married Women” and signed with the initials “L.P.”, which, some three centuries later, Dave Harker (re-)identified as those of the broadside writer Laurence Price ( fl. 1628–75).19 The ascription

16 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1978; repr. Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1988), p. 3. 17 Hyder E. Rollins, “The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad”, PMLA, 34 (n.s. 27) (1919), pp. 258–339 (pp. 259–60); Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 52–53, 80. 18 Rollins, “The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad”, p. 305; Watt, pp. 80–81. 19 Dave Harker, “The Price You Pay: An Introduction to the Life and Songs of Laurence Price”, in Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event, ed. by Avron Levine White, Sociological Review Monograph, 34 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 107–63; Dave Harker, “A Warning”, Folk Music Journal, 6.3 (1992), pp. 299–338. 280 david atkinson is absent from later printings of “A Warning for Married Women”, which is presumably why Child missed it. That is to say, subsequent printed copies revert to a characteristic anonymity, perhaps following Price’s death.20 It is worth noting, too, that later copies contain quite numerous, often small but nonetheless occasionally semantically significant, lexical variants from Price’s text. Price’s initials are also found on the earliest broadside copies of two further Child ballads, “The Famous Flower of Serving-men” (Child 106) and “Robin Hood’s Golden Prize” (Child 147), but once again the attribution rapidly disappears from the record. While it is probably safe to say that Price was responsible for the initial writing of these particular broadsides—though not necessarily for originating the ballads in a modern “authorial” sense, as the products of his own autonomous creative imagination—the effect of this knowledge of Price’s authorship is not so much to stamp the ballads with his authority, as to illustrate Child’s point that “a man and not a people has composed them”. When “The Dæmon Lover” turns up in print in the eighteenth century as “The Distressed Ship- Carpenter”, it looks less like Price’s broadside text and rather more like the ballad as it has been printed and collected in North America in modern times (Child 243 B).21 The prose work by Thomas Deloney (d. 1600 or before) colloquially known as Jack of Newbury includes the words of two Child ballads, “The Fair Flower of Northumberland” (Child 9) and “Flodden Field” (Child 168), which are presented, apparently quite deliberately, as if they were already current with singers. Of “Flodden Field”, Deloney writes, “the commons of England made this song, which to this day is not forgotten of many”. Then he describes how during the course of a visit by the king, Henry VIII, and his queen, the female spinners and carders of Jack’s cloth manufactory sang “The Fair Flower of Northumberland”: “after due reverence, the maidens in dulcet manner chanted out this song, two of them singing the ditty, and all the rest bearing the burden”. But the context is, of course, fictional and it seems possible, if not especially likely, that Deloney had at least a hand in the composition of “The Fair Flower”; and no doubt he was paid for Jack of Newbury in its entirety. Yet beyond that early com-

20 Harker, “A Warning”, p. 305. 21 The Distressed Ship-Carpenter ([London?], [1750?]) [ESTC T34719]; “The Distressed Ship Carpenter”, in The Rambler’s Garland, composed of some delightful new songs ([New- castle upon Tyne?], [1785?]), pp. 5–7 [ESTC T46276]. Clinton Heylin, in his enjoyably wide- ranging account of the afterlife of this ballad, Dylan’s Daemon Lover: The Tangled Tale of a 450-Year Old Pop Ballad (London: Helter Skelter, 1999), pp. 20–21, has identified another copy in A Collection of Diverting Songs (c. 1737–38) in the Bodleian Library. the ballad revival and national literature 281 mercial interest, his “authorship” has not remained attached to either ballad. The “Fair Flower” taken down from singers is generally shorter than Deloney’s text, and his refrain line “Follow, my love, come over the strand” is replaced by something like “Maid’s love whiles is easy won”. As one final example, broadside ballads concerning “Mary Ambree” may be the work of William Elderton (d. 1592 or before), but over the span of a couple of centuries or more, not one of the extant printed copies bears his name or initials.22 They do, however, display just the same sorts of variations as arise among folk songs collected from different singers.23 Instances such as these, then, are the exceptions to prove the rule concerning the essential literary anonymity of ballads prior to the Roman- tic revival.24 In Child’s words, “the author counts for nothing”: no one generally speaks of “Elderton’s ‘Mary Ambree’ ”, “Deloney’s ‘Fair Flower of Northumberland’ ”, or “Price’s ‘Dæmon Lover’ ”. Certainly, the condition of literary anonymity in the seventeenth, the eighteenth, or even the nineteenth century does not imply “a time when the distinctions since brought about by education and other circumstances had practically no existence”—far from it. What it does imply, however, is a state of widely shared cultural ownership in ballads and ballad-like materials, to which a broad swathe of the population would have been able to enjoy access, should they find themselves so minded.25 As Vic Gammon states, citing the contemporary description by John Case in The Praise of Musicke of workers singing in Elizabethan England, singing was the form of artistic expression most readily available to vast

22 Hyder E. Rollins, “William Elderton: Elizabethan Actor and Ballad-Writer”, Studies in Philology, 17 (1920), 199–245 (pp. 235–36). 23 Dianne M. Dugaw, “Anglo-American Folksong Reconsidered: The Interface of Oral and Written Forms”, Western Folklore, 43 (1984), pp. 90–95; and, more generally, Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850, Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth- Century English Literature and Thought, 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. with a new preface, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 31–46. 24 The discussion here is essentially concerned with the verbal texts of ballads—hence “literary anonymity”—largely because of the existence of literary models against which to set out the argument. In principle, there is no obvious reason why ballad melodies, which constitute an equal (albeit separable, because semiotically distinct) component of the ballad, should not be considered in similar terms; although the history of the recording (either mechanically or by notation) of ballad tunes is somewhat out of kilter with that of the verbal texts. 25 The chapter on broadsides in Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 168–205, is suggestive for the earlier part of the period in question, though given to some questionable assertions and new historicist flights of fancy. 282 david atkinson numbers of the population, and it is safe to assume that it was ubiquitous in pre-industrial society.26 Hard evidence is generally quite difficult to come by, and one is to some extent reliant on a regressive method of historical reconstruction;27 but there are thousands of broadsides, some of which correlate with ballads collected from singers at a much later date. There are plentiful early references, too, to semi-professional ballad singers of the Autolycus variety and other allusions to the presence of ballads in the culture, though often from a relatively elite and sometimes derogatory standpoint.28 Then there are Addison’s Spectator papers, and the beginnings of the appearance of ballads in printed books, poetical anthologies, miscellanies, and so forth.29 Derogatory comments notwithstanding, broadside ballads represented a significant part of the cultural currency of the lower and middling ranks of society in late medieval and early modern England and lowland Scotland, and on into the nineteenth century, albeit with a gradual shifting towards the lower end of the social scale with the passage of time. Regardless of undoubted social, political, economic, gender, age, and other differences that prevailed among the population (and no doubt influenced the reception of particular items), ballads were available to be sold or passed on without charge; to be sung, recited, read out loud or in silence, in public or in private; and to be displayed in public and in private, by, for example, the pasting of broadsides on to the walls in places such as alehouses and private dwellings.30 They were available, moreover, in very large numbers, if the figures cited for broadside printing and circulation are to be believed. Tessa Watt estimates that somewhere between six hundred thousand and three to four million broadside ballad copies were printed in the second half of the sixteenth century.31 Between 1557 and 1709 more than three thousand titles were registered with the Stationers’ Company in London (and this does not, of course,

26 Vic Gammon, Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600–1900 (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 10–11. 27 Burke, pp. 81–85. 28 Natascha Würzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550–1650, trans. by Gayna Walls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Appendix, pp. 253–84. 29 Albert B. Friedman, The Ballad Revival: Studies in the Influence of Popular on Sophisti- cated Poetry (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 84–155. 30 Dugaw, Warrior Women, pp. 16–17; Rollins, “The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad”, pp. 336–38; Watt, pp. 12, 148–49, 194. 31 Watt, p. 11. the ballad revival and national literature 283 take account of unregistered titles).32 In the nineteenth century, Henry Mayhew quoted figures for copies of individual murder ballads, an especially popular subgenre, running into the millions.33 Ballad singers and sellers were ubiquitous.34 No doubt oral circulation will have contributed vastly greater numbers of copies to this stock of shared cultural materials. It should be clear, however, that a condition of literary anonymity does not necessarily imply ballads circulating solely, or even predominantly, by word of mouth. All of the evidence to hand comes from written manuscripts and, more commonly, printed broadsides, chapbooks, garlands, miscellanies, and so forth. In fact, social historians now point to a constant interweaving and reciprocity of oral and written forms characterising the culture of the period in question, well into the nineteenth century.35 Likewise, different broadside printings can vary in exactly the same sort of way as is normally associated with folk songs collected from singers in more recent times. This is not an area that has been investigated on a grand scale; but the few detailed studies that have been made are quite conclusive for ballads such as the “Mary Ambree” broadsides and “The Maid in Sor- row” (Roud 231),36 “The Wild and Wicked Youth” (Roud 490),37 and “The

32 Hyder E. Rollins, An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries (1557–1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1924). 33 Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, A cyclopædia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work, 4 vols (London: Griffin, Bohn, 1861–62; repr. New York: Dover, 1968), I, 284. 34 Evidence ranges from representations in early modern plays through to Mayhew’s surveys of street life. A search under “ballad” in the online Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674–1913, produces an interesting selection of references [accessed 26 January 2009]. 35 Some key studies include: M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993); Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700, Oxford Studies in Social History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); R.A. Houston, Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Soci- ety in Scotland and Northern England 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Barry Reay, Popular Cultures in England 1550–1750, Themes in British Social History (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 36–70; Keith Thomas, “The Meaning of Literacy in Early Modern England”, in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition: Wolfson College Lectures 1985, ed. by Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 97–131; David Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1750–1914, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). A landmark article in relation specifically to the circulation of ballads is Rainer Wehse, “Broadside Ballad and Folksong: Oral Tradition versus Literary Tradition”, Folklore Forum, 8 (1975), pp. 324–34 [2–12]. 36 Dugaw, “Anglo-American Folksong Reconsidered”. 37 Roger de V. Renwick, “The Oral Quality of a Printed Tradition”, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 47 (2002), 81–89; repr. in Folk Ballads, Ethics, Moral Issues, ed. by Gábor Barna 284 david atkinson

Foggy Dew” (Roud 558).38 In actual fact, a glance through the collations of broadside examples in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads would be more than enough to make this point. The common factor in ballad variation is not oral circulation but literary anonymity. It appears that without the imprint of an author, individuals—and these might be printers just as much as singers—were at liberty to manipulate the received texts as the mood (or the market) took them, ranging from the introduction of minor, semantically neutral, textual variants to wholesale rewriting. The concept of authorship or intellectual property was far from fully developed in the late medieval and early modern periods. Pirated editions of Shakespeare’s plays (the so-called “bad quartos”) and unauthorised con- tinuations of The Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, show scant regard for the integrity of the author. It is true that landmark editions, such as Caxton’s Canterbury Tales, the 1616 folio of Ben Jonson’s plays, or the Shakespeare folio of 1623, all demonstrate that, even in the case of literature of a relatively popular kind, the persona of the author was beginning to exert an authority over the text. Nevertheless, in a fluid authorial environment it is not unreasonable to envisage, at the far end of the scale from a self- conscious author like Jonson, a large body of materials unattached to the persona of a named author becoming appropriated and interfered with by those who were caught up in a chain of reading, performance, reproduction, transmission. Intuitively, this should especially be the case when what is at issue is a corpus of relatively short pieces that invite performance of some kind, that were amenable to committal to memory with more or less accuracy, and that in their oral manifestations at least were quite ephemeral. It is sometimes said, too, that some of the vast numbers of broadside sheets that were printed but did not find their way into the extant collections ended up as toilet paper.39 What literary anonymity of the kind associated with ballads, in manuscript, print, and/or oral circulation, posits, therefore, is a virtually entire absence of textual authority. These ballads belonged to a cultural environment in which anyone could take on a quasi-authorial role in the course of the transmission of an anonymous ballad.

and Ildikó Kríza, Papers of the 31st International Ballad Conference, Budapest, 21–23 April 2001, Szegedi Vallási Néprajzi Könyvtár / Bibliotheca Religionis Popularis Szegediensis, 10 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2002), pp. 81–89. 38 Robert S. Thomson, “The Frightful Foggy Dew”, Folk Music Journal, 4.1 (1980), 35–61. 39 Dugaw, Warrior Women, p. 17; Smith, pp. 169–70. the ballad revival and national literature 285

What can be envisaged for anonymous ballads—oral, written, and printed alike—is a condition very much akin to what Bernard Cerquiglini has posited for medieval vernacular literature under the term variance.40 Cerquiglini argues that in the Middle Ages the literary work was “a vari- able”, usually anonymous, to which the fact of an originating authorship was less important than the continual rewriting of works, which would then belong to whoever prepared them and gave them form again.41 The (misguided) quest for a “unique moment in which the presumed voice of the author was linked to the hand of the first scribe, dictating the authentic, first, and original version” merely reflects the environment in which philology itself developed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, “when the text gained its almost perfect and immutable reproduction, attested contents, and legal paternity”.42 It is, however, quite anachronis- tic when applied to literatures that preceded the full emergence of the idea of the author. Instead, Cerquiglini identifies a state of purposeful variation—French variance, translated as “variance”—as intrinsic not only to the transmission but also to the very aesthetic of medieval vernacular literature. The varying written realisations of a medieval vernacular work represent not “errors”, scribal departures from a single text authenticated by the persona of the author, but a state of “generalized authenticity”.43 What Cerquiglini seems to envisage is a dispersed textual authority shared across all of the renderings, and perhaps all of the possible renderings, of what can be loosely identified as the “same” literary work. Tim William Machan, taking a similar approach, has demonstrated in greater detail that Middle English literature is generally lacking in a sense of stable textual authority, as works became varied and expanded in the course of textual transmission and realized in manuscripts of varying content and layout.44 Notwithstanding a humanist tradition of textual criticism that has endeavoured to equate the authorial with the authoritative text, textual authority was mostly the preserve of Latin auctores, although certain vernacular writers (Chaucer included) can be read as expressing

40 Bernard Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, trans. by Betsy Wing (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 [Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989)]). 41 Cerquiglini, p. 33. 42 Cerquiglini, p. 34. 43 Cerquiglini, pp. 34, 51. 44 Tim William Machan, Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994). 286 david atkinson an anxiety about the integrity of their works.45 Importantly, though, the vast bulk of Middle English literature is anonymous, and for every Chau- cer, Gower, or Dunbar, there are many more unknown writers.46 Middle English romances, it might be noted, provide a very good example of this anonymity,47 and some of the romances may have provided direct literary sources for ballads. Citing the now widely recognised instability that pervades even the texts of Shakespeare—the variant Hamlets, King Lears, Macbeths, and so forth, whereby “Shakespearian writing is no longer presented as a closed, original, and seminal utterance; it is constant and multiple production”— Cerquiglini extrapolates his conception of dispersed textual authority: “When our literary presuppositions have become sufficiently unhinged that Shakespeare is affected, it is not hard to conceive of the disturbance gradually spreading to most of premodern writings.”48 Certainly, these medieval models of textual authority seem particularly well suited to the anonymous ballad in English. It remains just to note that these models are founded in the study of written texts, notwithstanding the undoubted importance for medieval literature of oral expression and transmission. Cerquiglini’s variance is thus distinguished from Paul Zumthor’s probably rather better-known term mouvance, which is more specifically tied to the precedence of the voice over writing.49

Anonymity and “Oral Tradition” An absence of textual authority and a state of shared cultural ownership then invite various further inferences. One is that Thomas Percy, piecing together the Reliques out of a collation of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century broadsides, items from printed anthologies, some Scottish ballads sent by correspondents, and texts from the Percy folio manuscript, besides interpolations of his own, in order to establish a national collection of ancient poetry, was not, on the face of it, violating any great principle of

45 Machan, pp. 93–135 (for Chaucer, pp. 113–18). 46 Machan, pp. 99–102. 47 Albert C. Baugh, “The Middle English Romance: Some Questions of Creation, Pre- sentation, and Preservation”, Speculum, 42 (1967), 1–31 (p. 8); Rosalind Field, “Romance in England, 1066–1400”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. by David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 152–76 (p. 168). 48 Cerquiglini, p. 39. 49 Cerquiglini, pp. 84–85 n. 10; Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Édi- tions du Seuil, 1972), pp. 65–75, 507; Paul Zumthor, La lettre et la voix: De la “littérature” médiévale (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), pp. 160–68. the ballad revival and national literature 287 textual (read “authorial”) authority.50 Where he fell down, allowing himself to be subsequently consigned, as Albert Friedman so memorably put it, “to the special hell reserved for bad editors”,51 was in permitting his Preface to continue to convey the impression that he was offering an edition of the folio manuscript, long after he had abandoned that intention.52 The manuscript itself, which dates from the mid-seventeenth century and which Percy found in Shropshire and supposedly saved from destruction by fire in the mid-eighteenth century, seems to belong to just that early modern shared cultural environment. It does include a number of lyrics by known writers—Lovelace, Waller, Wither, Carew, Cleveland, for example. The bulk of the manuscript, however, comprises verse romances, metrical histories, alliterative poetry, ballads, and numerous other assorted verses and songs, some of which are also known from broadsides and garlands, and a few of which can be attributed to writers like Deloney (“The Span- ish Lady’s Love”), but most of which are anonymous. There is also a copy of the “Mary Ambree” ballad. It is possible that the manuscript was copied out by a lawyer, Thomas Blount, as Percy suggested, though Furnivall doubted it,53 but there is certainly no sense that he was the author of any of the contents. Though a number of facts can be ascertained, for the most part the provenance and the purpose of the Percy folio manuscript, the “foundation document of English balladry”,54 remain shrouded in early modern obscurity and anonymity. Another inference is that where ballads were widely favoured and thus survived over a substantial period of time, if they were nonetheless part of a culture that was widely accessible, then there is no particular requirement for a concept of tradition to underlie their survival and transmission. The word “tradition” was in early modern use, referring to the handing down of knowledge or the passing on of doctrine, and the

50 Friedman, pp. 185–232; Nick Groom, “The Formation of Percy’s Reliques”, in Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Introduction by Nick Groom, 3 vols (London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1996), I, (1–68); Nick Groom, The Making of Percy’s Reliques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); Zinnia Knapman, “A Reappraisal of Percy’s Editing”, Folk Music Journal, 5.2 (1986), pp. 202–14. 51 Friedman, p. 205. 52 [Percy], Reliques (1765), I, ix: “THE Reader is here presented with select remains of our ancient English Bards and Minstrels [ . . .] The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio manuscript, in the Editor’s possession, which contains near 200 poems, songs, and metrical romances.” 53 Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances, ed. by John W. Hales and Frederick J. Furnivall, 3 vols (London: Trübner, 1867–68), I, xiii–xiv. 54 Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, I, ix. 288 david atkinson association of tradition with respect and duty is there in Shakespeare;55 but the point is that if ballads were widely and anonymously available in the culture, then there would have been no particular requirement for respect or duty towards them. No doubt, if tradition is conceived as “personal relationship”—an individual, conscious, volitional, and affective engagement in a relationship with particular people across time (typically at least one generation), expressed through repeatable cultural activities (such as singing) and their artefacts (such as ballads)—then that is as likely to have occurred in early modern times as at the present day.56 Such a formulation, however, is not at all specific to ballads or to anything else; it could be embodied in almost any cultural activity.57 Instead, what emerged during the eighteenth century was a conception of tradition tied to the perceived distinctiveness of a particular kind of literature; that is to say, “oral tradition”.58 Gradually, from the middle decades of the century, the idea gained ground that oral tradition could give rise to literature of outstanding merit. This can be traced, for example, through a new appreciation of the unwritten rhetoric of native American peoples, the appearance of Macpherson’s Ossian, and the recognition that the great Homeric epics originated in a preliterate world and, eventually, that “Homer” was just the name given to a legion of bards who sang the old stories of ancient Greece. In an anticipation of the Romantic movement, oral poetry came to be particularly associated with the expression of heightened passion and strong emotions. Unsurprisingly, oral tradition came into its own at the time of Rousseau’s critique of modern civilisation, the discovery of the “noble savage”, and the cult of primitivism—all of which seem to lie behind Child’s ideal “ballad society”. On the other hand, it would not do to understate the competing claims in this same

55 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. and expanded edn (London: Fontana, 1988), pp. 318–20. 56 Barry McDonald, “The Idea of Tradition Examined in the Light of Two Australian Musical Studies”, Yearbook for Traditional Music, 28 (1996), pp. 106–30; Barry McDonald, “Tradition as Personal Relationship”, Journal of American Folklore, 110 (1997), pp. 47–67. 57 McDonald, “The Idea of Tradition”, p. 116; McDonald, “Tradition as Personal Relation- ship”, p. 58. 58 Nicholas Hudson, “ ‘Oral Tradition’: The Evolution of an Eighteenth-Century Con- cept”, in Tradition in Transition: Women Writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth- Century Canon, ed. by Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., and James G. Basker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 161–76; Nicholas Hudson, “Constructing Oral Tradition: The Origins of the Con- cept in Enlightenment Intellectual Culture”, in The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain 1500–1850, ed. by Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 240–55. the ballad revival and national literature 289 period for the stability, coherence, and elegance of writing, its capacity to organise thought, most ably expressed by Samuel Johnson. It was a conviction of the necessity of writing to the refinement of language and literature that caused both Johnson and David Hume to dismiss Ossian as a forgery. So, as European societies became increasingly attuned to written culture, intellectuals and theorists became increasingly conscious of the differences between two kinds of literature, oral and written—something that had not directly concerned their counterparts in the medieval or early modern periods at all. Percy’s English Reliques was compiled in direct response to Macpher- son’s Scottish Ossian, the two standing as competing attempts to appropriate the idea of an original British national poetry to a particular one of the constituent nations.59 In the “Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels” prefacing the Reliques, Percy created nothing less than an invented Brit- ish prehistory, incorporating a complex theory of literary origins which posed Gothic scalds and English minstrels in opposition to Macpherson’s Celtic bards, and a written origin for ancient English poetry as against the oral poetry of Ossian. This earliest written poetry, that of the scalds, in turn found its way into a secondary oral tradition, that of the minstrels, and they in turn were superseded by the “minor poets” who turned out narrative songs (i.e. ballads) for the broadside press. Percy’s convoluted, imaginative construction (for that is what it is) only partially turned on oral tradition, but it did posit a long line of anonymous poetry, subject to substantial variation, which took in not only the early modern broadside ballads but also, implicitly, the broadside ballads that were still current in the 1760s. This pedigree, again implicitly, legitimised Percy’s own editorial approach, which mixed materials of different provenance and collated variant copies of the “same” item at will, as well as filling in lacunae where the supposed original verses were “missing”, to provide the English reading public with representative samples of their native, national poetry. Both Percy and Macpherson—neither of them unduly constrained by the idea of textual authority—were extremely influential in presenting a distinct kind of national literature to a literary, semi-scholarly readership. The controversy surrounding Ossian, as well as the publishing success of Percy’s Reliques, their influence on the Romantic movement, and the inspiration they provided for subsequent ballad collectors and editors,

59 Nick Groom, “Celts, Goths, and the Nature of the Literary Source”, in Tradition in Transition, pp. 275–96; Groom, The Making of Percy’s Reliques, pp. 61–105. 290 david atkinson not just in England and lowland Scotland but, via Herder, across Europe, are all well known. So, too, are Joseph Ritson’s bad-tempered accusations, first that Percy had fabricated the Reliques entirely, and secondly that he had in any case surreptitiously doctored his originals. The second charge has largely stuck, for Ritson was concerned with textual authority in a way in which Percy simply was not. As Friedman observes, Percy’s few belated adjustments in the fourth edition of the Reliques (where he introduced a system of asterisks to indicate places “where any considerable liberties were taken with the old copies”) amounted to “admissions of guilt rather than effectual efforts to atone in a substantial way for editorial waywardness”.60

Ballad Publication and “The Discovery of the People” It is certainly not coincidental that a growing awareness of the distinction between kinds of literature—written literature, the product of named authors imbued with consequent textual authority, on the one hand; and anonymous, often “oral”, and often supposedly ancient literature, on the other—should have emerged in the course of a century during which literature was becoming increasingly professionalised. Michel Foucault’s famous essay “What Is an Author?” set out the consequences of a transition from literary anonymity to the emergence of a system of author’s rights and ownership over texts which developed during the seventeenth or eighteenth century: literary discourses came to be accepted only when endowed with the author function. We now ask of each poetic or fictional text: From where does it come, who wrote it, when, under what circumstances, or beginning with what design? The meaning ascribed to it and the status or value accorded it depend on the manner in which we answer these questions. And if a text should be discovered in a state of anonymity—whether as a consequence of an accident or the author’s explicit wish—the game becomes one of redis- covering the author. Since literary anonymity is not tolerable, we can accept it only in the guise of an enigma. As a result, the author function today plays an important role in our view of literary works.61 Needless to say, it is difficult to locate chronologically the emergence of the idea of authorship with any great precision, though much work has

60 Friedman, p. 205. 61 Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?”, in The Foucault Reader, ed. by Paul Rabinow (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), pp. 101–20 (pp. 109–10). the ballad revival and national literature 291 now appeared on the subject and Foucault’s account has been refined, notably by Roger Chartier, into a rather more gradual change in the way works in the vernacular and their originators came to be regarded from the late medieval period onwards.62 At the beginning of the eighteenth century the first ever Copyright Act, which came into force in England in 1710, began the process that would eventually enshrine the author’s ownership of his or her own work in law.63 At the other end of the century, Romanticism (to simplify greatly) exalted, among other things, individual- ism, personal expression, and the genius of the creative author. In the wake of Percy, ballad collectors and editors like Walter Scott and his various associates continued the practice of collating and conflating, until such time as Scott advised Motherwell of his regrets in this regard.64 In a letter of 3 May 1825, Scott expressed the view that each ballad text, as taken down from a particular informant in a particular part of the country, amounts to an independent literary production: I think I did wrong myself in endeavouring to make the best possible set of an ancient ballad out of several copies obtained from different quarters, and that, in many respects, if I improved the poetry, I spoiled the simplicity of the old song. There is no wonder this should be the case when one considers that the singers or reciters by whom these ballads were preserved and handed down, must, in general, have had a facility, from memory at least, if not from genius (which they might often possess), of filling up verses which they had forgotten, or altering such as they might think they could improve. Passing through this process in different parts of the country, the ballads, admitting that they had one common poetical original (which is not to be inferred merely from the similitude of the story), became, in progress of time, totally different productions, so far as the tone and spirit of each is concerned. In such cases, perhaps, it is as well to keep them separate, as giving in their original state a more accurate idea of our ancient poetry, which is the point most important in such collections.65 This passage asserts the textual authority of each individual ballad and its source—not so much, perhaps, for Ritson’s reasons of scholarly accuracy, as out of respect for the “genius (which they might often possess)” of the

62 Roger Chartier, “Figures of the Author”, in The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. by Lydia G. Cochrane (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 25–59. 63 Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1993). 64 For ballad publications in the wake of Percy’s Reliques, see Friedman, pp. 233–58. 65 The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, with memoir by James M’Conechy, 2nd edn (Glasgow: David Robertson, 1847), p. xxxiii. 292 david atkinson individual “singers or reciters”. Scott here yokes together the seemingly opposed Romantic ideologies of “ancient poetry” on the one hand, and of the individual poet as creative genius on the other. Scott’s opinion, along with Motherwell’s own accumulating experience of ballad collecting, helped the latter formulate the Introduction to his Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern, in which he rejected the practice of editorial collation and emendation (although the texts printed in the volume are mostly treated in that manner, the Introduction having been written after it had commenced publication).66 Instead, Motherwell advocated editing at the level of the individual collected text: “What their texts or forms originally were, we have no means of knowing; what they are now, we do know; all then which remains by us to be done, is to transmit that knowledge unimpaired, and with rigid fidelity, to posterity.”67 In the wake of Scott’s letter, Motherwell came to invest each ballad “version” (employing the term that is now commonplace in ballad scholarship) with its own textual authority, and he castigated those who would rewrite ancient ballads in accordance with the sentiments of their own day “under no authority of written or recited copy”.68 That textual authority was in turn authenticated by the conscientious recording in his manuscripts of the named source, time, and place for each ballad version he collected.69 In the course of his later collecting Motherwell grew to be increasingly interested in individual ballad singers and their repertoires, an interest that was shared by a number of other Scottish ballad collectors: Robert Jamieson and the ballads of Anna Brown; Andrew Crawfurd and those of Mary Macqueen; Peter Buchan and those of James Nicol.70 Motherwell’s theoretical views exerted a strong influence on the editorial practice of Svend Grundtvig, who in the mid-century commenced publication of the Danish ballad edition, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser (1853–1976), and summarised his own editorial policy as being to print “all there is . . . as it is”, and who in turn guided Child in his editorial approach

66 Mary Ellen Brown, William Motherwell’s Cultural Politics 1797–1835 (Lexington: Uni- versity Press of Kentucky, 2001), pp. 78–102. 67 Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. cii; also pp. v–vii. 68 Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. vii. 69 William B. McCarthy, “William Motherwell as Field Collector”, Folk Music Journal, 5.3 (1987), 295–316 (p. 304); William Bernard McCarthy, The Ballad Matrix: Personality, Milieu, and the Oral Tradition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 38. 70 McCarthy, “William Motherwell as Field Collector”, p. 305; McCarthy, The Ballad Matrix, p. 39. the ballad revival and national literature 293 to the English and Scottish Popular Ballads.71 By the time of Child’s edition, therefore, the ballad was no longer being understood as essentially anonymous. The result is that there is potentially a mismatch between, on the one hand, Child’s fidelity to the authority of texts, in particular those ascribed to an individual named source; and, on the other, his theoretical formulation of the “genuine popular ballad” as “an expression of the mind and heart of the people as an individual, and never of the personality of individual men”. Child himself was well aware that the transmission of ballads over time had necessarily entailed departures from their original form, but the aim of his edition had to be that it should contain, as Grundtvig advised, “every bit of genuine ballad lore, and consequently all that may be genuine, and I might say, also all that has been so”.72 Following Child, there dawned an era of so-called “scientific folklore”, where scrupulous attention is paid to every detail of ascription and texts are assumed to be taken down and published “exactly” as they were given by their informants—though such an assumption glosses over a wealth of difficulties familiar to textual scholars. Ballads are now recorded as the products and the property of individual minds, raised to the status of quasi-authors, exercising textual authority over their own ballad versions: “co-author with the author of the text, and co-composer with the composer of the air”, in the words of Phillips Barry.73 The survival and transmission of ballads in such a situation is envisaged no longer as deriving from access to a shared cultural “pool”, but as a conscious process of handing over or handing down from one individual to another: that is to say, a process that can be literally designated as “tradition” (Latin tradere).74 Variation is still an empirical fact, but it can be subtly distinguished from the variance and dispersed textual authority of the earlier anonymous

71 Flemming G. Andersen, “ ‘All There Is . . . As It Is’: On the Development of Textual Criticism in Ballad Studies”, Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, 39 (1994), pp. 28–40; Mary Ellen Brown, “Mr. Child’s Scottish Mentor: William Motherwell”, in Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child, ed. by Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts, Selected Papers from the 26th International Ballad Conference (SIEF Ballad Commission), Swan- sea, Wales, 19–24 July 1996 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 29–39; Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt, Ballad Books and Ballad Men: Raids and Rescues in Britain, America, and the Scandinavian North since 1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 175–226, 241–300. 72 Hustvedt, p. 260. 73 Phillips Barry, “The Part of the Folk Singer in the Making of Folk Balladry”, in The Critics & the Ballad, ed. by MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin (Carbondale: South- ern Illinois University Press, 1961), pp. 59–76 (p. 71). 74 Williams, pp. 318–19. 294 david atkinson ballads.75 Instead, it is ascribed to the artistry, and hence the discrete textual authority, of named individuals with discrete repertoires, who come to be labelled as something like “bearers of tradition”,76 “the passionate individualist folk-singer” (Phillips Barry again),77 or “source singers”.

Ballad Revival and the Invention of Tradition There are all sorts of good reasons—social historical, ethnographic, eth- nomusicological, even psychological—for representing the individuality of ballad singers in this way. Yet textual authority might not necessarily be among them. Objectively, the ballad carrier, however inventive he or she might be, is not the author (barring certain instances of conscious recom- position), but at most something like an “author-equivalent”, and more often the equivalent of the medieval scribe, working possible variation into pre-existing texts. This situation then presents a theoretical problem, which is at its most evident in the comparatively rare instances where the textual transmission of a particular ballad can be traced from one individual to another, and especially where textual variation is minimal and/ or semantically indifferent. Who then really is the “author-equivalent”? How should the ascription be documented? And, more pertinently, who now holds textual authority over the ballad?78 There are methodological considerations, too, that highlight problems posed by the location of textual authority with the individual informant. Thus, while the original composition of ballads is generally acknowledged to be beyond recovery, what might be termed “archetypal editing” is still in principle a justifiable method, so long as it is carefully documented, especially for editors with less generous space at their disposal than had Child. Arthur Quiller-Couch, for example, when editing the 1910 Oxford

75 On variation in folk song, see Roger D. Abrahams and George Foss, Anglo-American Folklsong Style (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 12–36; Tom Burns, “A Model for Textual Variation in Folksong”, Folklore Forum, 3 (1970), pp. 49–56; Eleanor R. Long, “Ballad Singers, Ballad Makers, and Ballad Etiology”, Western Folklore, 32 (1973), pp. 225–36; Ian Russell, “Stability and Change in a Sheffield Singing Tradition”, Folk Music Journal, 5.3 (1987), pp. 317–58. 76 C.W. v[on] Sydow, “On the Spread of Tradition”, in Selected Papers on Folklore Pub- lished on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, ed. by Laurits Bødker (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1948), pp. 11–43. 77 Barry, p. 76. 78 For some discussion of this issue, see David Atkinson and Julia C. Bishop, “The Con- tributor as Collector: Ann Lyall and ‘The Fair Flower of Northumberland’ ”, in Emily Lyle: The Persistent Scholar, ed. by Frances J. Fischer and Sigrid Rieuwerts, BASIS, vol. 5 (Trier: WVT, 2007), pp. 5–24. the ballad revival and national literature 295

Book of Ballads, adopted a conservative version of Scott’s editorial method of collation from a potentially unbounded ballad corpus, so as to offer the reader a single “best” (Quiller-Couch’s word—“archetypal” or “representative” might have been better) text of each ballad, with minimal editorial rewriting.79 Somewhat similarly, the historic-geographic or “Finnish” method in folklore scholarship seeks to document all the recorded variants of a particular ballad or tale type, and thence to trace its chrono- logical and geographical diffusion, permitting, in principle at least, the reconstruction of a hypothetical archetype or ur-form.80 Currently rather out of scholarly fashion, historic-geographic studies have nonetheless yielded valuable and informative results in ballad research in the past.81 Both of these approaches to balladry have a good deal in common with genealogical editing, which remains a standard scholarly method in the face of the editorial challenges posed by classical and biblical manuscripts that exist in multiple recensions. So long as it is understood that an archetype or ur-form established in this manner may never have been read or sung in precisely that form, either of these methods offers a feasible solution to the problem of rendering and analysing multiple iterations of the “same” thing. Nevertheless, Foucault’s assertion, “literary anonymity is not tolerable”, is not a bad description of the situation in post-Child ballad studies. And just as the intolerance of anonymity, and the concomitant abandonment

79 The Oxford Book of Ballads, ed. by Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), pp. ix–xi. E. David Gregory, “In the Shadow of Child: Other Victorian Perspectives on Ballad Editing”, in Ballad Mediations: Folksongs Recovered, Represented, and Reimag- ined, ed. by Roger de V. Renwick and Sigrid Rieuwerts, BASIS, vol. 2 (Trier: WVT, 2006), pp. 69–77 (especially p. 71), is representative in rejecting this kind of ballad editing as “Romantic” and “Idealist”, as against the prevailing “positivist” and “scientific” trend. For a more nuanced discussion, see Hugh Shields, “Textual Criticism and Ballad Studies”, in Dear Far-Voiced Veteran: Essays in Honour of Tom Munnelly, ed. by Anne Clune (Miltown Malbay: Old Kilfarboy Society, 2007), pp. 287–94. 80 Kenneth A. Thigpen, “Historic-Geographic Method”, and Ilana Harlow, “Tale-Type”, in Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature, ed. by Mary Ellen Brown and Bruce A. Rosenberg (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1998), pp. 307–10, 641–42. 81 For example, Eleanor Long, “The Maid” and “The Hangman”: Myth and Tradition in a Popular Ballad, Folklore Studies, 21 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1971); Holger Olof Nygard, The Ballad of “Heer Halewijn”, its Forms and Variations in Western Europe: A Study of the History and Nature of a Ballad Tradition (Knox- ville: University of Tennessee Press, 1958); Archer Taylor, “Edward” and “Sven i Rosengård”: A Study in the Dissemination of a Ballad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931); Lajos Vargyas, Researches into the Mediaeval History of Folk Ballad, trans. by Arthur H. Whitney (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1967). 296 david atkinson of a sense of cultural ownership shared virtually without limits, impinges on the textual field, so it also poses an evident problem for the continued identification of ballad poetry with a national literature, the collective productions of a nation or people. This dilemma, however, has been partially solved by the “invention” of an idea of “tradition”. Tradition is an abstract attribute that can be ascribed selectively and at will to more or less any activity and/or artefact, and it can therefore mean many different things according to the context in which the idea is applied.82 As noted above, “tradition as personal relationship” is a powerful formulation that can, presumably, operate under virtually any circumstances. The new emphasis on named and historically and geographically located sources, however, lends itself well to formulations of tradition such as the volitional construction of the present out of particular instances in the past, expressed through the achievement of a perceived continuity with previous kinds of cultural activity, particular artefacts or texts, and individual styles.83 It also lends itself quite readily to the identification of local— often as opposed to national—traditions. This is the case even when the artefacts in question, like so many ballads and folk songs, are actually very widely dispersed. Many of the collections published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are ostensibly circumscribed and localised in this way: Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England; English County Songs; Northumbrian Minstrelsy; Songs of the West; Folk Songs from Somerset; and so on. With textual authority vested in individual ballad versions, there is then the potential to identify very precisely

82 There is not space here to do justice to such a large subject, but Raymond Williams’s outline of “tradition” as a keyword remains an essential starting point. Ruth Finnegan, “Tradition, But What Tradition and For Whom?”, Oral Tradition, 6 (1991), pp. 104–24, poses very pertinent questions. Henry Glassie, “Tradition”, in Eight Words for the Study of Expres- sive Culture, ed. by Burt Feintuch (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 176–97, is a wide-ranging reflection on the subject. Surveys of the subject in the folklore literature show a (not unnatural) tendency to follow quite closely the development and particular concerns of (especially American) folklore scholarship. Dan Ben-Amos, “The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in its Meaning in American Folklore Studies”, Journal of Folklore Research, 21 (1984), pp. 97–131, remains an essential outline, with associated references; Simon J. Bronner, “The Meanings of Tradition: An Introduction”, Western Folklore, 59 (2000), pp. 87–104, again with numerous references, brings the matter further up to date. The coverage in McDonald, “The Idea of Tradition”, pp. 106–09, is concise but useful. 83 This aspect is elaborated by Glassie, and in Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious”, Journal of American Folklore, 97 (1984), pp. 273–90. the ballad revival and national literature 297 the sources of tradition in the past and to model “traditional” practice in the present upon them.84 Once both the abstract nature of tradition and the volitional element within tradition are accepted, then it becomes apparent that all traditions are necessarily “invented”, and Eric Hobsbawm’s idea of the “invention of tradition” need not be employed with any pejorative implication.85 Hobsbawm drew a somewhat confusing distinction between, on the one hand, “custom”, which can accommodate innovation and change so long as it continues to appear identical or at least compatible with precedent; and, on the other hand, “tradition”, which he characterised by invariance.86 Tradition, on this formulation, is also amenable to artificial invention, often for ideological purposes, through the establishment of practices (“invented traditions”) that embody an ostensible continuity with the past which is actually largely factitious.87 Suggestive as it is, Hobsbawm’s notion of invented tradition has met with no more than limited acceptance in the study of folk music revivals, not least because it tends to emphasise extreme cases of non-continuity, whereas the characteristic of “flexibility in substance and formal adherence to precedent” that Hob- sbawm ascribes to “custom” seems to provide a much better description of most modern folk revival practices.88 Nevertheless, in the present context the notion of the invention of tradition does seem pertinent to the new requirement for a concept of tradition that, it is argued here, came with the shift in sensibility that marked the movement away from literary anonymity and from the ballad as a component of a shared culture. Both the problematic ascription of a newly situated textual authority to individual ballad versions and their named sources, and the lingering desire for a

84 I discuss this subject at somewhat greater length in the chapter entitled “An English ballad tradition?” in David Atkinson, The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, and Practice (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 233–52. 85 Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14. 86 Hobsbawm, pp. 2–3. 87 Hobsbawm, pp. 1–2. 88 Hobsbawm, p. 2; Neil V. Rosenberg, “Introduction”, in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, ed. by Neil V. Rosenberg, Foreword by Alan Jabbour (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 1–25 (p. 20). A few pages later on, however, Hobsbawm states that “genuine traditions” are also characterised by adaptability (p. 8), and this might easily be equated with the flexibility that he has already ascribed to “custom” (p. 2). That seems to accord much more closely with most modern folklore defini- tions of tradition, at the same time permitting the term “invented tradition” to be reserved for application to the more extreme examples of non-continuity. 298 david atkinson national, or at least local, identity for ballad and folk song, depend heavily on the sense of continuity enabled by this idea of tradition. What this implies, then, is a dependence between, on the one hand, the practice of revivalism—the collecting, recording, documenting, publishing, and disseminating of ballads—and, on the other, the conscious ascription to ballads and their sources of the value that is described as “traditional”. Moreover, it looks from this particular instance as though revival actually, and perhaps necessarily, precedes tradition.89 Unsurpris- ingly, one of the key elements of Tamara Livingston’s model for modern music revivals is reference to the authority of individual source informants and other well-documented sources, such as historic recordings.90 I have argued elsewhere that the “second” (post-war) folk song revival in England can be understood in terms of an ideological or symbolic, but also affective, engagement across time with the cause and the cultural dignity of ordinary men and women.91 I envisage this as being dependent upon the identification of socially and historically situated source singers, and facilitated by the preservation of their song versions, and the textual authority invested in them. Livingston additionally indicates that revivals characteristically set themselves outside of the cultural mainstream, reviving kinds of music that are in one way or another marginal. The Romantic ballad revival might be thought to have wrought some particular variations on that model. Arguably at least, when the revival of interest was gathering pace in the eighteenth century, anonymous ballads were in fact still quite close to the shared cultural mainstream, at least as measured by the volume of broadside printing and circulation. Only gradually, as described above, did textual authority come to be primarily ascribed to individually documented sources. But that same location of textual authority then served to help define ballads as marginal, in particular by identifying them as the property of certain named individuals, who were themselves often presented as marginal figures—female, poor, elderly, solitary, itinerant, and so on. At the same time, the identification of such authoritative source singers

89 Gammon, p. 244, argues something quite similar. 90 Tamara E. Livingston, “Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory”, Ethnomusicology, 43 (1999), pp. 66–85. 91 David Atkinson, “Revival: Genuine or Spurious?”, in Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation, ed. by Ian Russell and David Atkinson, Elphinstone Institute Occasional Pub- lications, 3 (Aberdeen: Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, 2004), pp. 144–62. the ballad revival and national literature 299 would conveniently reinforce the notions of otherness and of consequent authenticity that tacitly underlie the idea of “scientific” folklore.92 During the nineteenth century, social changes, such as the increasingly evident divisions of sensibility and taste that accompanied industrialisation on the one hand, and the rise of the middle class on the other, would further reinforce the perception of ballads as being culturally marginal. Moving further away from the idea of literary anonymity and of a widely shared cultural environment, the invention of tradition came to be more and more essential to sustaining the sense of continuity with the past that was—and is—critical to the practice of folk revivals. But the shift in the location of textual authority has nonetheless been damaging to the national ballad project. A modern sense of continuity has to be often symbolic, focused on such things as ideology and social class; in so far as it refers still to nation or people, its scope is much more likely to be regional or local than national.

Conclusion To recapitulate a little: ballads in late medieval and early modern Eng- land and lowland Scotland are envisaged as having belonged to a widely shared cultural environment, to which, predominantly, the evidence of broadside print now bears witness. A crucial corollary of that situation was that the ballads were characterised by a state of literary anonymity, whereby textual authority was referred not to a single source but instead dispersed across all of a ballad’s renderings, or possible renderings—a condition that can be equated with the variance of medieval literature. This situation then, inadvertently and via several quite spurious historical arguments, lent itself rather well to the ballad revival, which began in the Romantic era and can for convenience be traced back to the appearance of Percy’s Reliques, and which sought to present the ballads as representative of native, national literature(s). However, ballad collectors and editors subsequently started to document meticulously the sources of individual ballad versions, imputing to them a textual authority that previously had not resided with any identified individual. In the process, that earlier condition of variance became superseded by a more modern notion of textual authority virtually akin to authorship per se (though, to textual editors at least, nonetheless problematical). This change was

92 On authenticity, see Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folk- lore Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997). 300 david atkinson potentially extremely damaging to the presentation of ballad poetry as national literature which was at the heart of the Romantic ballad revival. However, it also became possible, and indeed compelling, to identify this new textual authority, with the wellsprings of what is now given the label of tradition. Although this has proved insufficient to preserve the ballad genre from the margins of culture, it has nonetheless enabled a sense of continuity with the past that is a fundamental ingredient of the continuing practice of folk revival. National Folklore, National Drama and The Creation of Visual National Identity: The Case of Jón Árnason, Sigurður Guðmundsson and Indriði Einarsson in Iceland

Terry Gunnell

Annually on the evening of the 6 January (Twelfth Night), the main streets of certain towns around Iceland (especially in Vestmannaeyjar, and in the north and east of the country) find themselves inundated by processions of torch-bearing ‘álfar’ (elves),1 all of them clad in versions of Icelandic national costume past and present. These odd figures proceed to head for a large bonfire about which they dance before firing a seemingly endless fusillade of fireworks (costing thirty to forty pounds a piece) up into the night sky. The álfar are commonly led by figures representing a king and queen, and are often divided into groups of so-called “dökk” (dark) and “ljós” (light) álfar (comparable to demons and angels).2 Over and above the dramatic qualities of this Icelandic phenomenon,3 the tradition is of particular interest because the costumed processions it centres around actually have little or nothing to do with the Icelandic folk belief that is supposed to fuel them. First of all, according to Icelan- dic folk belief of the past, the álfar are supposed to be on the prowl at Christmas or New Year, rather than on Twelfth Night (often called þret- tandinn [the thirteenth]), which in Iceland is more directly related to the final departure of another set of Christmas beings, the so-called jólasvei- nar (Christmas lads) who have earlier left out presents for the children of Iceland.4 Secondly, Iceland is now (and was originally) a republic, and

1 Sing. Álfur: On the meaning of this word in Iceland, past and present, see further Terry Gunnell, “How Elvish were the Álfar?”, in Andrew Wawn et al., ed. Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 111–130. 2 See Árni Björnsson, Saga daganna (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1996), p. 404. 3 On other Nordic customs of this kind, see, for example, Terry Gunnell, ed. Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area (Uppsala: Kungl, Gustav Adolfs Akademien, 2007); and The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995). 4 See Árni Björnsson, Saga daganna, pp. 341–353 and 395, and Terry Gunnell, “The Com- ing of the Christmas Visitors: Folk Legends Concerning the Attacks on Icelandic Farm- houses Made by Spirits at Christmas”, Northern Studies, 38 (2004), pp. 51–75, and “Grýla, Grýlur, ‘Grøleks’ and Skeklers: Medieval Disguise Traditions in the North Atlantic?”, Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore (2001), pp. 33–54. 302 terry gunnell earlier accounts of Icelandic folk belief say little about the Icelandic álfar or huldufólk (hidden ones) ever being ruled by kings and queens.5 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Icelandic folk belief has never tended to divide its álfar into dark and light groups. The concept of demonised álfar is essentially a literary, academic idea inherited from the Middle Ages, which was itself apparently based on medieval concepts about different angelic worlds.6 The idea never caught on in popular Icelandic belief where (according to later folktales) most álfar appear to have become Christian (at least in some form). What, then, is the background of these costumed traditions? They are a text-book example of the transformation of folk culture into national culture in the form of national heritage, and simultaneously a direct result of the intimate interface between the collection of folk culture and the creation of ‘national’ drama and ‘national’ theatre forms which occurred in many northern European countries in the mid- and late-nineteenth century. They also underline the long term effects of material being transferred between genres, moving from the field of the intimate oral nar- ration, which works on the imagination and changing cultural memory of the rural community, into the shape of the multi-dimensional but essentially visual stage performance which is presented before a well- dressed urban theatre audience in a ‘national’ theatre. Almost immediately, changes take place. The ‘hidden’ female álfur has become a national Icelandic symbol (see below) and the ‘troll’ has turned into an apparently diminutive Johnny Rotten figure decorating the windows of countless Norwegian souvenir shops.7 The National Romantic movement of the nineteenth century manifested itself in a variety of ways, centring first of all on the identification and then collection of material that apparently reflected the ‘national

5 For excellent English translations of a number of key Icelandic folk legends, see Jac- queline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends, 2nd ed., revised (Stroud: Tempus Pub- lishing, 2005). 6 See Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony Faulkes, 2nd ed. (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005), pp. 19, 28 and 45; and Eluci- darius in Old Norse Translation, ed. Evelyn Sherabon Firchow and Kaaren Grimstad (Reyk javík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, 1989), pp. 8 and 12–14. See also the discussion of this subject and the nature of álfar in Gunnell, “How Elvish were the Álfar?”, and the playwright Indriði Einarsson’s comments in Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin: Sjónleikur í þremur sýningum (Akureyri: Prentsmilja Norður- og Austur- Amtsins B.M. Stephánsson, 1872), p. vi. 7 See, for example; http://www.travelexplorations.com/happy-trolls-greet-visitors-in- oslo-norway.338307-48518.html (last visited 30 April, 2012). iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 303 identity’ and ‘national spirit’, and then the use of this material as a means of creating a new ‘national culture’. This process was especially apparent in those potential nations in northern Europe which were under the political control of others: countries like Norway, Iceland, Finland, Ireland and Scotland, where movements involving essentially ethnic, linguistic and romantic nationalist ideologies were drawing elite circles of historians, linguists, lawyers, folklorists, botanists, and literary scholars into contact with a range of influential visual artists, poets and other writers.8 The artists and writers then went on to adapt the ideas and material collected by the folklorists, archaeologists and historians to create public symbols which were meant to underline new national images embodying the new national spirit. The end products of the movement were thus not only ‘national’ collections of folktales and new national histories, but also, in the long term, new national museums, national galleries and, above all, national theatres in which the now twice-selected raw ‘national’ materials were handed back to the general public in a new living form of ‘national’ art, art that had become national heritage and, in many ways, set the patterns for the heritage movements of our own times. This process of the remoulding of folk culture in the form of ‘national’ theatre was particularly clear in Norway, Iceland, Ireland and Finland, and in the early works of authors like Ibsen, Björnson, Yeats, and Synge, all of whom were directly engaged at some point in the creation of ‘national drama’ designed to be shown in the new national theatres.9 The connection between the various cultural fields was perhaps no clearer than in Norway where, within the space of just twenty years, key editions of national folktales, national history and mythology, national ballads appeared alongside influential new works in a new national language. In precisely the same period, three new specifically ‘Norwegian’ theatres came into being in Bergen, Kristiania (later Oslo), and Trondheim. These went on to present, among other works, Ibsen’s first plays, almost all of which contained themes relating to national history or folklore.10 Indeed, it is worth noting that Ibsen,

8 See further Bjarne Hodne, Norsk nasjonalkultur: En kulturpolitisk oversikt, 2nd ed. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2002), p. 16. 9 See below. 10 See further below. For Ibsen’s early plays, see Henrik Ibsen, Ungdomsskuespill og his- toriske dramaer 1850–1864; dikt, 13th ed. (Oslo: Gyldendal/ Norsk forlag, 1962); and, among others translations, Early Plays by Ibsen (Cataline, The Warriors Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans), trans. Anders Orbeck (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1921); and The Vikings at Helgeland, trans. James Walter McFarlane (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). 304 terry gunnell like Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge and the Icelandic playwright Matthías Jochumsson, was also personally involved in folk collection at one point in his life (in 1862).11 A great deal has been written about the political role and nature of the first collections of folktales,12 and the same applies to the development of the first national theatres in these fledgling nations.13 The intention behind the following chapter is to examine first and foremost the intrinsic connection between the fields of folklore and theatre that occurred during the early years of professional theatre in Iceland. I am especially interested in the long-term effects of the transformation of material as it moves from folk culture to national theatre and visual heritage, in other words, the movement of folk beliefs and folk legend material from the farmhouse to the stage and the theatre poster. As a number of scholars have pointed out, the collection of tradition (and the selection of what was to be published or stressed) in itself involved the selection and isolation of particular elements which went on to become part of a system of national ‘symbols’.14 Regional features, regional tales and regional beliefs were often coming to represent national difference, thereby attaining whole new levels of meaning that they had never had before.15

11 Michael Meyer, Ibsen (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 205–208. 12 See among others the articles by Alver, Hodne, Honko, Ó Giolláin, Anttonen and others cited elsewhere in this article. See also Terry Gunnell, “Daisies Rise to Become Oaks: The Politics Of Early Folk Tale Collection in Northern Europe”, Folklore, 121 (2010), pp. 12–37. 13 See, for example, Ben Levitas, The Theatre of Nation: Irish Drama and Cultural Nation- alism 1890–1916 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002); Robert Welch, The Abbey Theatre 1899– 1999: Form and Pressure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Lise Lyche, Norges Teater Historie (Asker: Tell Forlag A.S., 1991); Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I: Ræturnar (Reyk- javík: Menningarsjóður, 1991); Íslensk leiklist, II: Listin (Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmennta- félag, 1996); and A People’s Theatre Comes of Age: A Study of the Icelandic Theatre 1860–1920 (Reykjavík: The University of Iceland Press, 2007); and Þórunn Valdimarsdóttir and Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, Leikfélag Reykjavíkur: Aldarsaga (Reykjavík: Leikfélag Reykjavíkur and Mál og menning, 1997) on the development of theatre in Ireland, Norway and Iceland. 14 See, for example, Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), p. 71; Pertti J. Anttonen, Tradition through Modernity: Postmodernism and the Nation State in Folklore Scholarship, Studia Fennica: Folkloristica, 15 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2004), p. 87; Brynjulf Alver, “Folk- lore and National Identity”, in Nordic Folklore: Recent Studies, ed. Reimund Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 12–20; and Lauri Honko, “Studies on Tradition and Cultural Identity: An Introduction”, in Lauri Honko, ed. Tradition and Cultural Identity, NIF Publications, 20 (Turku: Nordic Institute of Folklore, 1988), p. 8. 15 See also Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore, p. 65; and Ørnulf Hodne, Det nationale hos norske folklorister på 1800-tallet, Kults skriftserie nr. 24/ Nasjonal identitet nr. 2 (Oslo: Norsk iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 305

The feeling that the new collections of national folklore were ideal source material for the new forms of national literature and national art of course has early roots reaching back to the work of Herder.16 In his 1815 appeal for material (“Circular, Die Sammlung der Volkspoesie”) which already talks of Germany as a nation (“Deutschland”), German peasantry (“deustschen landvolke”) and the Fatherland (“vaterland”), Jacob Grimm underlined the importance and role of folk material for the potentially unified German nation, underlining how “ohne es genauer zu erforschen, vermögen weder unsere poesie, noch geschichte, noch sprache in ihren alten und wahrhaftligen ursprungen ernstlich verstanden zu werden” (our literature, history and language cannot seriously be understood in their old and true origins without doing more exact research on this material).17 In their introduction to the highly influential Deutsche Sagen from 1816, the Grimm brothers also firmly “empfehlen unser Buch den Liebhabern deutscher Poesie, Geschichte und Sprache und hoffen, es werde ihnen allen, schon als lautere deutsche Kost, willkomen sein” (recommend [their] book to devotees of German poesie, history and language and hope that it will be welcome to all as purely German fare).18 Similar ideas caught on comparatively quickly in the Nordic countries. In Denmark in 1844, the Danish art historian Niels Laurits Høyen held an influential lecture, “Om Betingelserne for en skandinavisk Nationalkunsts Udvikling” (On the Conditions for the Development of a National Art in Scandinavia), underlining the use of historical and folk motifs for national art forms.19 Ibsen, commencing his theatre career, was

forskningsråd, 1994), pp. 5–6. Hodne sees this process as having four particular areas in Norway, i.e. a) medieval research (providing a means of reconstructing a political and cultural historical past; b) documentation of the present culture of farmers and farmworkers; c) research into cultural continuity, showing by comparison how the past and the present were connected; and d) formidling, i.e. the passing on of this information to the public as a means of creating a sense of nationality. 16 On Herder’s influence, see, for example, Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 34–44; and Donald Ward, “Epilogue”, in The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm, I–II, ed. and trans. Donald Ward (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), II, pp. 347–349. 17 See Jacob Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, ed. K. Müllenhoff, (Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler, 1864– 1890), VII, p. 593; trans. in Jack Zipes, The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), p. 26. 18 See Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, 2 vols. in 1, (Darmstadt: Wissen- schafliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), p. 17; trans. in Donald Ward, The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm, I, p. 11. 19 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara: Brot úr bæjar- og menningarsögu Reykjavíkur (Reykjavík: Helgafell, 1954), 18–19; and Karl Madsen, Málaralist Dana 306 terry gunnell also deeply affected by the ideas of the German academic Herman Het- tner, who in his Das Moderne Drama (1852) had deliberately pointed to the use of history and folk “fantasy” for the development of new dramatic forms.20 Indeed, Hettner saw so-called Märchenlustspiel as being a useful means of depicting two opposite worlds: a world of dreams where deeper truths can be elucidated, and an everyday world which is, in contrast, comic and comparatively shallow.21 The model Hettner pointed to could be found in works by Shakespeare (such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It), a writer who was very clear about the use of history as a model, and folklore as a doorway to truth. Similar ideas were later to be voiced by Yeats and Lady Gregory in their quest for the development of the Irish Literary Theatre at the end of the century, a quest that resulted in the establishment of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1899. Yeats, the Neo-Romantic, might have been less than impressed by Ibsen’s later social dramas, but he was highly enamoured by Per Gynt. Yeats had similar views to a correspondent in United Ireland who had argued in 1894 that: the Irish Stage could be made one of the surest and readiest means of instilling a vigorous nationality in the bosoms of the people, and exorcising there from every odious thought and impulse that smacks of West Britonism.22 Yeats felt that the best means of instilling such feelings was by drawing on the nation’s past and its folklore. As he wrote in Cosmopolis in 1898: literature dwindles to a mere chronicle of circumstances, or passionless phantasies and passionless meditations, unless it is constantly flooded with the passions and beliefs of ancient times, and that of all the fountains of the passions and beliefs of ancient times in Europe, the Slavonic, the Finnish, the Scandinavian, and the Celtic, the Celtic alone has been for centuries close to the main river of European literature.23 Furthermore, as he underlined in 1893, Folk-lore is at once the Bible, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Book of Com- mon Prayer, and well-nigh all the great poets have lived by its light. Homer,

(Reykjavík: Dansk-íslenska félagið, 1927), p. 20. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Niels_Lauritz_H%C3%B8yen (last viewed 30 April, 2012). 20 Hermann Hettner, Das Moderrne Drama: Aesthetische Untersuchungen (Braun- schwieg: Friedrich Bieweg und sohn, 1852). 21 Meyer, Ibsen, pp. 115–116. 22 Ben Levitas, The Theatre of Nation: Irish Drama and Cultural Nationalism 1890–1916 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), p. 24. 23 W.B. Yeats, Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth, ed. Robert Welch (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 198. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 307

Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and even Dante, Goethe and Keats, were little more than folk-lorists with musical tongues . . . There is no passion, no vague desire, no tender longing that cannot find type or symbol in the legends of the peasantry or in the traditions of the scalds and the gleemen.24 Such beliefs were to later find solid expression in works like Lady Gregory’s Kathleen ni Houliahan (1902) and Grania (1910), and Yeats’ own On Bailes Strand (1904), Deidre (1907) and At the Hawk’s Well (1916).25 A similar fusion of folklore, tradition and drama can also be found in J.M. Synge’s The Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1907), and Deidre of the Sorrows (1910).26 Clearly, the village and the farm contained the mirror of the world that the Irish nation was meant to see. Lady Gregory, Yeats and Synge, like Ibsen, were also collectors of folklore, and the same applies to one of the two Icelanders that will be focused on for the rest of this article, a man who seems to have directed the aforementioned currents of thought to Iceland. Sigurður Guðmunds- son, commonly referred to as Sigurður málari (the painter), has never been officially awarded the recognition he deserves by the public at large in Iceland, but was unquestionably the heart of the movement to create a national culture in Iceland. Born in Skagafjörður in northern Iceland in 1833, Sigurður studied art in Copenhagen, where he visited the theatre regularly. It was in Denmark that he encountered the ideas of Høyen,27 and almost certainly those of Hebbel as well. The influences of both men are certainly reflected in the ideas Sigurður brought home to Iceland in 1858, at the age of 25. During the following 16 years, until his early death in dire poverty in 1874, he came to be both an irritating thorn in the side of the authorities and a living inspiration for national culture of all kinds.28 Soon after his return, in 1861, Sigurður became one of the organisers of a group called Leikfélag andans (the Theatre Company of the Spirit), which met regularly to discuss matters of national culture (ranging from

24 Yeats, Writings on Irish Folklore, pp. 86–90. 25 See W.B. Yeats, Selected Plays, ed. Richard Allen Cave (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 49–72, and 87–123; and Lady Gregory, Selected Writings, ed. Lucy McDairmaid and Maureen Waters (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 301–311, and 383–421. 26 J.M. Synge, The Complete Plays, ed. T.R. Henn (London: Penguin, 1984), pp. 95–106, 131–273. 27 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, pp. 18–19. 28 On Sigurður’s life and work, see Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara; Jón Auðuns, “Æviminning”, in Jón Auðuns, ed., Sigurður Guðmundsson málari, 2nd ed. (Reyk- javík: Leiftur, 1972), pp. 1–41; and Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 241–278 and 285– 286, and A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, pp. 49–52. 308 terry gunnell architecture to art, education, banking and the buying of new steam ships). A year later, he published an article on the need for a national museum of antiquities (something on which work was commenced during his lifetime).29 He had already started making plans for the creation of a national costume for men and women30 and a national theatre. To his mind, the costume and the theatre would be an effective means of putting an end to what he viewed as the general “smekkleysi þjóðarin- nar” (tastelessness of the Icelandic nation) in dress and entertainment.31 It is noteworthy that when he wrote these words, Sigurður was rooming in the same house as Jón Árnason (1819–1888), head of the Stiftsbókasafn, later to become the national library. At this time, Jón was already heavily engaged in editing the first ‘real’ collection of Icelandic folktales (Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri), under the influence of the German scholar Konrad Maurer (1823–1902), and the ever watchful eyes of two other key players based in Copenhagen, the Old Norse scholar Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1827– 1889) and the leading figure in Iceland’s “struggle” for independence, Jón Sigurðsson (1811–1879).32 All of these figures, Sigurður included, were well aware of the ‘national’ and political role of the material they were collecting, in a very similar vein to the Norwegians (Faye, and Asbjørnsen and Moe), Danes (Thiele) and Scots (John Francis Campbell) before them, and Yeats and Lady Gregory a few years later. As Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson had underlined in their introduction to their first humble collection of folk material, Íslenzk æfintýri in January, 1852: Þessi ævintýri eru skáldskapur þjóðarinnar. Þau eru búningur hinnar einföldu hugsunar, sem þjóðin lifir og hefur lifað í. Þar kemur sögulöngun hennar fram og hinn einkennilegi blær, sem frásögur hennar eru vanar að vera hjúpaðar í. . . . Eru . . . ævintýrin harla markverð fyrir menntunarsögu

29 Sigurður Guðmundsson, “Hugvekja til Íslendinga”, Þjóðólfur, 14 (Thursday, April 24, 1861), pp. 76–77. 30 These ideas appeared in an article written before Sigurður’s return in Ný félagsrit, 17 (1857), pp. 1–53. 31 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, pp. 28–29. Elsewhere, Sigurður states quite simply that “Það þarf að laga alla þjóðina” (the entire nation needs repairing): Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, p. 38. 32 On Jón Árnason in English, see Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, “Jón Árnason (1819–1888)”, in Leading Folklorists of the. North: Biographical Studies, ed. Dag Strömbäck (Oslo, Bergen, Tromsö: Universitetsforlaget; 1971), pp. 419–435; and Andrew Wawn, “Foreword”, in Jón Árnason, Icelandic Legends, trans. George E.J. Powell and Eiríkur Magnússon (Felinfach: Llarnerch, 1995), pp. 2–4. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 309

þjóðar vorrar. Þau eru eins konar seinni tíma edda hennar, eða goðafræði, sem tíminn hefur lagað og breytt.33 (These folktales are the poetic creation of the nation [þjóðarinnar or nation being used here rather than rather than alþyðunnar or fólksins, which would refer to “the people”]. They are the creation of the naivety that the nation experiences and experienced. In them we see both the nation’s longing for history and the special feel that the nation’s narratives tend to be veiled in. . . . The folktales are very important for the history of our nation’s education. They are a kind of latter-day Edda, or a mythology, which time has altered or changed.) Similar attitudes appear in the various introductions that were composed for the main two-volume collection Íslenskar þjóðsögur og æfintýri (Icelan- dic folktales and wonder tales) which was to appear in Leipzig in 1862– 1864.34 Here, for example, we find Jón Árnason repeating his ideas about the way that folktales reflect not only the national spirit, but the national “art” better than anything else: Það má fullyrða það að munnmælasögur hafi fæðzt og myndazt í og með þjóðinni, þær eru skáldskapur þjóðarinnar og andlegt afkvæmi hennar öld eftir öld og lýsa því betur en flest annað hugsunarháttum hennar og venjum.35 (One might state that the oral accounts were born and created in and alongside the nation, they are the poetic creation of the nation and her spiritual offspring century after century and show better than most other things the nation’s way of thought and traditions.) Jón Sigurðsson in his review of Maurer’s earlier collection of Icelandic folktales, Isländische Volksagen der Gegenwart published earlier in 1860 underlined still further the importance that the folktale material should be presented in such a way that it presented the ‘right’ image of the nation. Jón Sigurðsson was a lawyer and a politician (a recognisable type even today), and was well aware of the importance of both spin and image: . . . það er ekki svo vandalaust að fara svo vel með slíkt efni, sem eru alþýðusögur og „kerlingabækur“, að það verði ekki annaðhvort hégómlegt, eða tugga og hjastur. Það er eins mikið að varast, að taka mátulega mikið

33 Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson, eds. Íslenzk æfintýri (Reykjavík: E. Þórðarson, 1852), p. 3. 34 Only the introduction written by Guðbrandur Vígfússon made it into the original two-volume edition. See Gunnell, “Daisies Rise to Become Oaks”. 35 Jón Árnason, “Inngangur”, Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri, I–VI (Reykjavík: Þjóðsaga, 1954–1961), I, p. xvii. 310 terry gunnell

og mátulega mart, til þess ekki verði mjög mikil skörð í, eða aptur borið í sumstaðar, því ekki er að hugsa að tæma allt í einu, og verður því að hafa ráð fyrir sér og velja vel. Það er ekki minni vandi, að velja svo, að sú rétta óspillta skoðun þjóðarinnar komi fram, en hvorki ofstæki hjátrúar einstakra manna, né spott heimskra gárúnga, né trúleysa ofvitringanna; þar á það og einnig skylt við, að sögurnar sé valdar svo, að þær lýsi ymsum hliðum geðslagsins, en sé ekki allar af sama tægi; ef sumar eru voðalegar og draugalegar, þá verða sumar að vera léttfærar og skemtigar [sic], fyndnar og fjörugar, annars verður allt skuggalegt og drúngalegt, og fælir menn frá sér.36 (It is no easy task working with materials like folktales [alþýðusögur] and old wives tales, ensuring that it does not become pretentious, or cliché-ridden blather. It is equally important to be careful to take not too much or not too little, creating gaps or over-emphases, because the idea should not be to empty everything immediately, but rather to be sensible and choose well. It is no less of a problem to choose in such a way that the uncorrupted opinion of the nation appears, and not the exaggerated superstitions of certain individuals, or the jokes of idiots, or the disbelief of eccentrics; related to this is the fact that the stories should be chosen in such a way that they reflect various aspects of the mentality, and are not all of the same kind, that some are horrible and ghostly, while others are light and amusing, funny and lively; otherwise everything will be shadowy and gloomy, and frighten people off.) For both Jón Sigurðsson and Guðbrandur Vigfússon (who wrote the final, accepted introduction to Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri), the folktales were thus seen as a bridge between the glorious, mythic golden age of Iceland and the less glorious present, and, simultaneously, a model of the art that the modern nation was capable of creating. As Guðbrandur wrote in his introduction: Þjóðsögurnar eru engin fornfræði í hinni vanalegu þýðingu þessa orðs er geymist öld frá öld óbreytta . . . Þær eru fornar í anda, en nýjar að smið; hinar gömlu sögur hrörna og liða undir lok, en í staðinn koma upp nýir menn og nýjar sögur sem skáldahugur þjóðarinnar leiðir æ fram nýjar (Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1954: xvi).37 (The þjóðsögur are no ancient knowledge in the usual sense of the word, meaning something that has been preserved over the centuries untouched . . . They are ancient in spirit, but newly created; old sagas wizen and die, but in their place come new people and new stories which the poetic mind of the nation continuously reproduces . . .).

36 Jón Sigurðsson, Review of Konrad Maurer, Isländische Volksagen der Gegenwart, vor- wiegend nach mündlicher Überlieferung (Leipzig 1860) in Ný félagsrit, 20 (1860), pp. 190–200. 37 Guðbrandur Vígfússon, “Inngangur”, in Jón Árnason, ed. Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri I–II (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1862–1864), I, p. vi. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 311

This brings us back to Sigurður Guðmundsson and his plans not only for a national museum, but also a national theatre, a theatre which, as Yeats and Ibsen dreamed, would produce national plays in the national language to educate the nation. Sigurður had already been personally involved in collecting and sending in folktales for Jón Árnason’s national collection, and in 1862, had started producing tableaux vivants of saga scenes for the Reykjavík public.38 A private memo from the same year shows that along with plans for the museum and a national gallery, he was also making additional plans for a national parliament building, a statue of the first settler, and a history of Icelandic art.39 Unsurprisingly, the role of writing new dramas for the new theatre was also to the fore in his mind, and from the start Sigurður was clear about where potential authors should find the models and material for these plays. In a letter to the author Steingrímur Þorsteinsson in 1861, Sigurður wrote that there was a great need for new historical dramas, noting encouragingly that Steingrímur had the skill of writing good dramatic speech.40 In terms of potential themes, Sigurður pointed Steingrímur directly to Jón Árnason’s forthcoming folktale collection as inspiration, adding that: . . . víst er það að stór nauðsin er á þess konar ritum, bæði til að gefa skáld- skapnum fullkomnari stefnu og eins til að spana men (sic) til að leika, því til þess hafa íslendingar stærri hæfileika en margir af ukkar, sem eruð í höfn (sic) halda.41 (. . . there is a great need for such works, both to give the poetic fiction a clearer direction, and to encourage people to act because the Icelanders have more ability in that field than many people in Copenhagen might imagine.) In this context, it might be noted that Sigurður also commenced work on three plays of his own, two of which were based directly on saga themes.42 It might also be noted that the aforementioned cultural society Leikfé- lag andans (later called the Kveldfélag [Evening Society]) included Jón Árnason among its members, as well as the later saga scholar and first

38 See Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, pp. 30–31; and Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 247–250. 39 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, pp. 28–29; and Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 253–254. 40 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, p. 31. 41 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, p. 31. In this letter, Sigurður also encouraged Steingrímur to translate Shakespeare’s plays, underlining the special need for translations of works like Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Othello. 42 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, p. 34. 312 terry gunnell translator of the Icelandic folktales into English, Eiríkur Magnússon (1833– 1913).43 And it was here in 1873 (a year before his death) that Sigurður gave a fiery speech underlining the role of a national theatre for the national spirit. In this he returned to the need for the writing and translation of good drama, stressing that the only language to be heard on the Icelandic stage should be Icelandic (indirectly criticising the popularity of certain Danish comedies). The stage, he wrote in his notes, is “merkil. í þjóðl. historisku, æsthetisku, musicölsku og öllu framfara tilliti” (very important nationally, historically, aesthetically, musically and in terms of all progress). Further- more, from the stage, it was possible to “menta þjóðina í skáldskap, söng, músík, sína mönnum alla helstu þjóðsiði á öllum öldum, bæði andlega og útvortis, og stirkja með því þjóðernið vort meira . . .” (educate the whole nation in literature, singing, and music, and show audiences how people lived at different times, both mentally and visibly, and thus strengthen our nationality more than by any other means . . .).44 Similar words were going to be expressed by Yeats in Ireland in a few years. The message in Iceland was obviously received loud and clear by, among others, one of Sigurður’s disciples, the poet and playwright Mat- thías Jochumsson (1835–1920), who had been also living in the same house as Jón Árnason and Sigurður in 1861. Matthías was later to echo Sigurður’s ideas in an article written in the newspaper Þjóðólfur in 1879, five years after Sigurður’s death: Ef dramatísk konst á ekki að verða til tómrar, ef ekki tvíræðrar skemmtunar, ef hún á að verða list, sem mentar, fegrar og fullkomnar þjóðlíf—eins og öll konst á að gjöra—þá verða menn að læra að leika SITT EIGIÐ ÞJÓÐLÍF.45 (If dramatic art is not meant to be only an empty . . . ambiguous entertainment, if it is supposed to be art which educates, beautifies and perfects our national life—as all art should do—then one has to be able to act one’s OWN NATIONAL LIFE). The question was what aspects of Icelandic national life were expected to educate the nation, to strengthen national feeling, and beautify and perfect the life of the nation? Sigurður Guðmundsson had pointed to the use of national history and folklore, and his tableaux vivants of saga figures

43 Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, pp. 61–62; and Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, p. 254. 44 Sveinn Einarsson, A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, p. 52; and Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 254–255; and Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, p. 30. 45 Sveinn Einarsson, A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, p. 52; and Íslensk leikhús, pp. 254–255. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 313 and drafts of saga plays reflected these ideas clearly. However, it was one thing to create living images of saga heroes or write poems about them, it was quite another to put them on stage in Iceland. Ibsen drew directly on this ancient material for his early works The Warrior’s Barrow (Kjæmpe- høien: 1850), and The Vikings at Helgeland (Vikingene på Helgeland: 1857),46 and the same applied to Strindberg, who wrote his own early work Den fredlöse (The Outlaw) in 1871.47 Ibsen’s and Strindberg’s audiences, however, were somewhat different to those in Iceland. As one potential author put it, the key problem was that Icelandic audiences had been brought up on the sagas, and they knew the texts almost off by heart. Any artistic deviation from the ‘original facts’ if not the ‘original’ speeches would have been greeted by endless arguments in the streets and papers, if not in the stalls. Any wider national agenda would have been lost to view.48 This feature immediately spotlights one of the intrinsic differences between the various art forms. Unlike novels, poetry and visual art, drama was not supposed to just represent national life and national history; it was also supposed to hold a living mirror up to it. When watched and experienced live by an audience, it creates a new (parallel) reality in the minds of those who receive it; in other words, it is received by the senses like other living experiences. This latter element also underlines the potential efficacy of drama as a nationalistic medium, something of which Sigurður Guðmundsson, Ibsen, Yeats and Lady Gregory were all well aware. The sagas, then were largely out of the question as material for the new Icelandic national stage. The newly published folktales were a different matter. They were seen as being ‘genuinely’ national, and both old and new: they told tales of the ancient past (something deliberately underlined by the editors) that many still knew and passed on in changeable oral form. The saga texts on the other hand had lived in a comparatively fixed textual form for centuries. The new fixed textual form of the folktales, on the other hand, was very recent. Its potential for drama was immediately grasped by not only Sigurður himself (who used it in another draft drama

46 See references above. 47 Other folklore-influenced works by Strindberg include Lycko-Pers resa (Lucky Per’s Journey, 1883); Fröken Julie (Miss Julie: 1888); Kronbruden (The Bridal Crown) and Svanevit (Swanwhite) written in 1901; and a collection of fairy tales composed in the style of Hans Christian Anderson: Sagor (Fairy Tales: 1903). 48 Indriði Einarsson, Séð og lifað: Endurminningar (Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið, 1972), p. 100. 314 terry gunnell of his own entitled Smalastúlkan [The Shepherdess]),49 but also two of his disciples, the poet Matthías Jochumsson, later to become the author of the Icelandic national anthem, and then, a little later, the young student Indriði Þorsteinsson (1851–1939), later to become the first head of Leikfélag Reykjavíkur (the Reykjavík Theatre Company). Matthías wrote his first play Útilegumennirnir (The Outlaws, later called Skugga-Sveinn)50 as a challenge to the popular Danish comedies of the time, soon after his graduation from the Latin Grammar School in Rey- kjavík in the late winter of 1861 while he was still living with Jón Árnason and Sigurður Guðmundsson.51 Like Sigurður, he had also been personally involved in collecting material for Jón Arnason’s collection of folktales, and drew directly on this material for his musical drama set in the seventeenth century. The work centres on the figure of an evil Icelandic outlaw, Skugga-Sveinn who has a big weapon; two student heroes; two young lovers held apart by their upbringing; a false magician; a figure of authority; and a pantomime dame and her cross-dressed son. The work is a little like a cross between The Pirates of Penzance, The Pirates of the Caribbean, 24 and Aladdin. It is laden with folklore motifs ranging from dreams to magic, and from ghosts and fetches to moss collection, and shows a saga-like hero surviving against the elements without having to go back to saga times, switching between settings with Shakespearean deftness. All of this represented a winning formula that resulted in the play being re-written and performed countless times all round the country over the next century.52 The play was first performed in Reykjavík in 1862, and, as ever, Sigurður Guðmundsson was directly involved. In addition to inspiring and encouraging Matthías to write the play, Sigurður wrote an

49 This work was later completed in 1980 by Þorgeir Þorgeirsson. See Sigurður Guðmundsson and Þorgeir Þorgeirsson, Smalastúlkan og útlagarnir (Reykjavík: Iðunn, 1980); Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 272–273; and Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, Þáttur Sigurðar málara, pp. 45–51. 50 Two printed versions of this play exist: the five-act Útilegumennirnir (Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja Íslands, 1864), based on Matthías’ original four-act work from 1862; and the revised Skugga-Sveinn (Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjánsson, 1898). Yet another version appeared on stage between these editions in 1872–1873: Lárus Sigurbjörnsson, “Um Skugga- Sveinn”, in Matthías Jochumsson, Skugga-Sveinn eða Útilegumennirnir: Sjónleikur í fimm þáttum (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs, 1852), pp. 103–104. 51 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 279–289. 52 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 244, and 279–285. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 315 additional dream scene for the first version of the play, as well as designing and painting all the scenery, much of which survives to this day.53 It is noteworthy that Matthías’ play was praised for its ‘national’ qualities,54 and both this work and the continued inspiration of Sigurður Guðmundsson were to lead directly to the creation of a second key ‘national’ Icelandic work, Nýársnóttinn (New Year’s Eve), which was to be produced by the students of the all-male Latin Grammar School in Reykjavík, once again under the guidance of Sigurður Guðmundsson, ten years later in 1871.55 The author and director, the twenty-year old student Indriði Einarsson had been warned to keep away from Sigurður because “hann talaði svo ljótt” (he talked dirty).56 Like any archetypal teenager, Indriði ignored the warning, and came directly under Sigurður’s wing, before eventually taking the artist’s fight for a national theatre towards its fruition in the mid-twentieth century.57 Nýársnóttin58 was the second work to be classed as an Icelandic ‘national drama, ‘þjóðleikur Íslendinga’,59 and, in many ways, is even more interesting than Útilegumennirnir. Based very loosely on a folk-legend in Jón Árnason’s collection about an ogress called Gellivör60 who annually kidnaps farmers as raw material for her Christmas meal, Nýársnóttin tells of yet another innocent young girl, Guðrún, who has been fostered by a farmer and his wife. Guðrún is in love with another young fosterling, Jón, who has also lost his parents and been brought up on the same farm. Jón has recently completed his education at the Latin school. (It is noteworthy what a heroic achievement that seems to be in these early plays written by students.) The innocent Guðrún is facing a variety of dastardly threats, not only from the evil, lying, melodramatic local merchant (who has distinct traces of Iago and Richard III in his dramatic genes), but also from the

53 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 258–266 and 281; and Indriði Einarsson, Séð og lifað, p. 99. 54 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 279 and 281; and A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, p. 201. 55 Indriði Einarsson, Séð og lifað, pp. 101–104. 56 Indriði Einarsson, Séð og lifað, p. 99. 57 On this fight, and the development of the Icelandic theatre towards ‘national’ status, see in particular Sveinn Einarsson’s detailed A People’s Theatre Comes of Age. 58 Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1872); and Nyársnóttin: Sjónleikur í fimm þáttum (Reykjavík: Bókaverzlun Guðm. Gamalíelssonar, 1907). 59 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, II, 205; I, pp. 306–307; and A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, pp. 48 and 96–97. 60 Jón Árnason, ed. Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri (1954–1961), I, pp. 148–151. 316 terry gunnell old álfur ruler61 (referred to as “Karl”) living in the local rocks who earlier placed a curse on all of the women in Guðrún’s family when her grand- mother refused to help the old álfur man’s wife to give birth (resulting in her death). The supernatural old ruler means to drive Guðrún mad at the stroke of midnight while she is watching over a corpse. Guðrún, however, is saved at the last minute by a good female álfur, Áslaug, who reveals the beauties of the álfur world to Guðrún. Meanwhile, the evil merchant is transformed into a gibbering wreck by turning up at the wrong place at the wrong time. The end result is that the lovers are restored to each other, and everyone, except the evil old men, lives happily ever after. As with Útilegumennirnir, there are traces of Shakespearean (if not also Marlowian) influence in Nýársnóttin. The play also contains thick lacings of Icelandic folklore, ranging from talk of ghosts and rural foods to references to various old legends about álfar taking over houses at Christmas for dances, wild álfur rides, álfur eye ointment, and odd folk beliefs about people getting visions if they put their heads under supernatural armpits. There are also (as in Útilegumennirnir) a range of quaint rural types, the Icelandic equivalents of the ‘stage Irishmen’, in the shape of proverb-quoting Icelandic figures like the old woman Anna, and the visiting tramp, Gvendur snemmbæri. Once again, Sigurður Guðmundsson was heavily involved in the first production of Nýársnóttin, which took place first in the dormitory of the Latin school on 28, 29 and 30 December, 1871, and the following Christ- mas was put on again in a proper theatre (the Glasgow) in town.62 Sig- urður designed the costumes and scenery,63 and the play’s division into three sýningum (visual shows) rather than þættir (acts) also seems to refer back to Sigurður’s tableax vivants. Certainly, even though it was relatively simply performed in its first school performance, Nýársnóttin was more visually spectacular than Útilegumennirnir, and thus more difficult for some of the new Icelandic rural theatres to attempt, not least because of its visual effects which included a mountain backdrop being raised to reveal the world of the álfar which lies behind it,64 something that can be

61 The old man’s later regal status is only implied in this play, in which he is said to be of “álfarkonungsætt” (the family of álfar kings): Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1872), p. 39. 62 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 243 and 305–307. 63 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, p. 266. 64 Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1872), pp. 64–65 and 71–72. See also Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, II, p. 157. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 317 clearly seen in the various photographs of the later 1907 production, for which the play was rewritten to underline its ‘national’ elements.65 From the start, the critics of Nýársnóttin stressed the ‘national’ qualities that they saw in the drama. Reviewers in the Reykjavík newspaper Þjóð ólfur on 6 and 23 January, 1872 underlined the play’s careful connection to “þjóðsögnum vorum og þjóðlífi” (national tales [i.e. folktales] and national life); how the characters were “þjóðlegur og náttúrulegar” (national [ethnic] and natural); and “hve þjóðtrúnni er nákvæmlega fylgt” (how the [national] folk belief was well reflected).66 The play, said the reviewer, made “hið þjóðlega fagrt, og hið fagra þjóðlegt” (the national beautiful, and the beautiful national).67 Nýársnóttin thus came to be a regular feature on the Icelandic stage (especially at Christmas and New Year). It first reappeared at Christmas 1872, and then in both 1881 and 1891. It was then rewritten by Indriði in 1907 (soon after Icelandic Home Rule was extended in 1903), to include not only new music and dance, but also new scenery ordered directly from Copenhagen. It was then performed almost annually in the capital until around 1923 (there were a total of 25 performances in the war years between 1916 and 1917, bringing the total of performances between 1907 and 1923 to 76). In spite of the technical problems that it posed, the play was also performed elsewhere around the country, appearing in Akureyri (in northern Iceland) both around 1900 and in 1923–1924; in Keflavík in 1884–1885, in Hafnarfjörður soon after 1886, and in Sauðárkrókur in 1890. It also appeared in Siglufjörður (year unknown), and even in the new Icelandic settlements of Winnipeg and Riverton.68 By the 1920s, Nýársnóttin had been translated into German and was being hailed as the national drama.69 It clearly touched a nerve. The connections between Nýársnóttin and Icelandic folk tradition, however, were not limited to the events on the stage. On New Year’s Eve 1871, the day after the end of the first performances in the Latin school, the actors, dressed in their decorative theatrical costumes as dökk- og ljósálfar (dark and light elves), joined the inhabitants of Reykjavík for

65 For photographs of the 1907 performance, see Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, II, pp. 333, 363–364 and 389; A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, between pp. 173 and 174; and Þórunn Valdimarsdóttir and Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, Leikfélag Reykjavíkur, pp. 48, 99 and 148. 66 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, pp. 303–307. 67 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, I, p. 307. 68 Sveinn Einarsson, A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, pp. 16, 97, 138 and 145; and Íslensk leiklist, II, pp. 245–248 and 301. 69 Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, II, p. 205. 318 terry gunnell a procession to their New Year bonfire on a hill above the town.70 As Indriði Einarsson notes, this additional element then seems to have been repeated in connection with performances elsewhere around the country, and there is little question that it is this interface between the theatrical performances and Icelandic New Year tradition that has led to the visual theatrical aspects of the modern ‘álfar dance’ tradition still occurring at New Year and especially on Twelfth Night around Iceland today.71 But what was so ‘national’ about Nýársnóttin, and what is the difference between ‘national theatre’ and ‘national painting’ or ‘national poetry’ that the former should be particularly capable of altering national tradition and even national image in this way? First of all, one should remember that drama is perhaps the most complex of art forms, working simultaneously on a range of semiotic levels, ranging from the visual to the textual, from the contextual to the rhyth- mic and tonal, and it is worth noting that way that both Útilegumennirnir and Nýársnóttin, like Ibsen’s Sancthansnatten (from 1852), and Per Gynt (from 1867), follow the Shakespearean Midsummer Night’s Dream form recommended by Hebbel, moving from daily reality to a natural night- time fantasy world and then back again. The difference is that in the Ice- landic plays, the imaginary scenic world presented for the audience in the shape of the Shakespearean forest is replaced by the snow-capped mountains and caves of the Icelandic wilderness (the folk-tale home of trolls, outlaws, ghosts and álfar). The world of ‘reality’, meanwhile, is not shown as being the urban environment of the town, but rather the rural setting of the farm (something which was later to be echoed in Augusta Gregory’s Kathleen ni Houliahan, and Synge’s plays, The Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World, all of which have a village or croft setting). It is worth bearing in mind that even though the rural setting of these plays is not necessarily dated to the past, it nonetheless contains implications of direct links to the past via the regular references to the

70 Árni Björnsson, Saga daganna, pp. 395–397; and Indriði Einarsson, Séð og lifað, p. 105 (described in the newspaper Þjóðólfur on 6 January, 1872). As Árni notes, the costumed tradition has come to be mainly associated with Twelfth Night bonfires, which are comparatively recent in Iceland, where Twelfth Night had been previously associated with the return of the last of the Christmas spirits to the mountains rather than a day of movement by the álfar. 71 Indriði Einarsson, Séð og lifað, p. 105; Árni Björnsson, Saga daganna, pp. 395–398; Vil- borg Davíðsdóttir, “Elves on the Move”, in Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area, p. 662; and an interview with (Ólína) Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir about her childhood memories from Skagafjörður taken by Jón Kristján Johnsen, student in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland, in 2003. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 319 forces of tradition (if only in the minds of the audience). The events of the first Nýársnóttin were meant to be taking place elsewhere in the countryside, contemporaneously with the performance itself in Reykjavík, on the night of 31 December, 1871. The version of the play re-written in 1907 is supposed to have taken place 70 years earlier than the first performance, in 1800–1801, but it is noteworthy that hardly any other contextual changes had been made to the play. The national romantic croft set amidst the natural landscape thus represents for the audiences (and the writers) a kind of ‘sacred time’ which combines history and the present through the medium of ‘tradition’. The álfar of Nýársnóttin, deliberately divided into pagan dökkálfar (dark álfar) and Christian ljósálfar (light álfar) on the sole basis of Snorri Sturlu- son’s medieval mythological handbook, Snorra-Edda (c. 1220),72 and possibly also influenced by prior images from Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s popular romantic play Elverhøj (Elf Hill: 1828) and Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the same name from 1845,73 are another deliberate means of connecting past, present and nature. There are regular references in the play to connections between the álfar and the land itself which these supernatural figures are said to have inhabited since Iceland first arose from the sea.74 Furthermore, the fact that in the play the álfar are hardly ever referred to as huldufólk (the hidden ones),75 a term interchangeably used for them in nineteenth-century Icelandic folktales and even in modern folk belief, underlines the other connections that Indriði makes between these figures and the semi-godlike álfar of ancient Icelandic poetry.76 As the audience would have noticed, the singing álfar of the play also use recognisably

72 See Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, pp. 19, 28 and 45. See also the author’s own comments on the subject in Indriði Einarsson, Nýársnóttin (1872), p. vi. 73 See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Elverhøj: Skuespil I fem Akter (København: Kunstforlaget, 1911); and Hans Christian Andersen, “Elverhøi” (The Elf Hill), in H.C. Andersen’s Eventyrt, ed. Hans Brix and Anker Jensen, I–V (København: Gyldendal, 1919), II, pp. 165–175; translated into English, in The Complete Illustrated Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, trans. H.W. Dulcken (London: Chancellor Press, 1983), pp. 359–364 (facsimile of Stories for the Household from 1889). As Sveinn Einarsson has noted (A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, pp. 139–140 and 201), Elverhøj was well known in Iceland: among other things, there are obvious borrowings from Heiberg’s melodies in certain tunes used in Matthías Jochums- son’s Útilegumennirnir. 74 Indriði Einarsson, Nýársnóttin (1872), pp. 40–42. 75 An exception is found in Indriði Einarsson, Nýársnóttin (1872), p. 20, where Áslaug refers to herself as a “huldukona” (hidden woman). 76 See further the references in Gunnell, “How Elvish Were the Álfar?” 320 terry gunnell ancient Icelandic poetic forms drawn from pagan times77 and refer to direct associations with the ancient pagan gods of the early Icelandic settlers, Þór, Óðinn and Freyja.78 Furthermore, the opposition between the young lovers and their Christian female álfur helper Áslaug on one side, and, on the other, the evil merchant (with implied connections to Danish culture and the old Danish trade monopoly) and the pagan, male, álfur ruler (with a undeniably regal feel about him), both of whom are eventually defeated by the rural Icelanders, has an obvious, if implied message which was later to be amplified to the full in the re-written version of the play from 1907. Here Áslaug appears holding an Icelandic flag after a revolution takes place in the álfur world against the now directly-stated monarchy of the old álfur king who is said to have close connections to other supernatural figures on the Scandinavian mainland.79 In both versions, however, the other Icelandic adults are shown to be innocents who have been led astray by the evil figures; in the long run they can not be held to blame for causing the lovers to run to the mountains, where Guðrún, as the youngest and most innocent, is literally granted insight into the world of the álfar. As for her lover, Jón, the 1907 version now underlines that he was, in fact, originally the son of an álfur woman. The implication is that future generations of Icelanders will carry naturally national Ice- landic álfur blood within them. The land and its spirits will live on in the people of the new nation.80 This brings us to the visual messages implied by the costumes for Nýársnóttin, which, like the scenery, were originally designed by Sigurður Guðmundsson, and which formed the foundation of the álfur costumes still used in the modern Icelandic Twelfth Night processions. Most striking is the fact that Áslaug, the Christian álfur woman who lives within the mountains, was dressed from the start in the form of national costume that had recently been designed by Sigurður for the women of the new Icelandic nation. It is also Áslaug who enters carrying the still unofficial Icelandic flag in the 1907 version of the play, in which she states directly at the end that “Vjer álfar erum ímyndanir fólksins/ og höfum ávalt lifað hjer

77 Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1972), pp. 33–35 (the ljóðaháttr verse forms, and the direct references to the poem Darraðarljóð contained in the Icelandic family saga, Njáls saga [“sópum og sópum”, cf. “vindum vindum” in the saga]). 78 Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1872), pp. 38–44 (the speech of Karlinn [the old álfur ruler] in particular). See also other mythological references on pp. 33–34. 79 Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1907), p. 171. 80 It is difficult not to see parallels in the results of the pairing of Aragon and Arwen (like Beren and Luthien) in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 321

á landi/ [. . .] Álfar eru hin leynda sál og líf í kletti og hólum/ sem fólkið skapar” (we álfar are the imagination of the nation/ and have always lived in this country/ [. . .] we álfar are the hidden soul and life of the rocks and hills,/ which the people create).81 In essence, from the earliest performances of Nýársnóttin, the Áslaug that appeared on the Icelan- dic stage was becoming a deliberate visual reference to another highly symbolic figure that was taking shape in these years, the so-called Fjall konan (Mountain Woman), Iceland’s Britannia, Liberté/Marianne, Hel- vetia and Germania, who nowadays (acted by a young actress) annually holds a speech in the square in front of the Icelandic parliament, and is a central feature of the annual Icelandic national-day celebrations held in Reykjavík.82 A development of a poetic image that had begun to appear in the works of certain Icelandic poets in the eighteenth century,83 the Fjallkonan is commonly said to have first appeared in visual form on the inside cover of the second volume of the first translation of the selected Icelandic folktales edited by Eiríkur Magnússon, a companion of Sigurður Guðmundsson and Jón Árnason in the Kveldfélag, in 1866.84 Drawn by the German artist, J.B. Zwecker, on the basis of a description given to him by Eiríkur, this particular image was next used by Benedikt Gröndal for the main commemorative poster for Iceland’s millennium celebrations in 1874. It is generally argued that the Fjallkona first appeared in person in Winnipeg for the Icelandic settlement’s ‘Iceland Day’ in 1924. However, I would argue that by this time, she was already manifesting herself in the shape of Áslaug, as can clearly be seen in photographs

81 Indriði Einarsson, Nyársnóttin (1907), pp. 181–182. On these features, and the use of the flag, see also Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, II, pp. 16 and 138. 82 For parallels to the other national figures, see Halldór Gíslason, “Fjallkonan: Myndbirting hennar og rætur”: http://www.dorigislason.com/aglite/filevault/fjallkonan myndbirting.pdf (last viewed 3 August, 2008). Regarding the origin of the image in Iceland, see also Árni Björnsson’s short article answering the question “Hver er uppruni fjallkonun- nar og hvaða hlutverki gegnir hún?” (What is the origin of the Fjallkona, and what is her role?) on the University of Iceland web site, Vísindavefur: see http://visindavefur.hi.is/svar .php?id=6696 (last viewed 30 April, 2012). 83 As Árni Björnsson notes (see web site noted above), the expression “fjallkona” (at this point not linked to the álfar) first appears in the poem Eldgamlan Ísafold by the Icelandic poet, Bjarni Thorarensen (1786–1841). 84 Jón Árnason, ed. Icelandic Legends, I–II, trans. George E.J. Powell and Eiríkur Mag- nússon (London: Richard Bentley, 1864–66). For the development of the image, and its use by the other parties mentioned above, see the above-mentioned on-line articles by Halldór Gíslason and Árni Björnsson. 322 terry gunnell from the 1907 production.85 In the original performance, Sigurður Guð- mundsson may have dressed her in landscape green rather than the later national blue,86 but the implications were already there in Áslaug’s words, power and behaviour. It is noteworthy also that performances from 1907 onwards include other álfur women even more directly associated with the elements, dressed in blue and white, in the shape of the figures of Heiðbjört (Clear Light); Mjöll (Snow) and Heiðbláin (Sky Blue).87 There is, in short, little question why Nýársnóttin came to have so much appeal at this time, and why it came to be the first play to be performed in the new Þjóðleikhúsið (National Theatre) when it eventually opened in 1950, partly as a result of Indriði Einarsson’s own constant activism.88 The transition of the álfur image from local folk legend to ‘national’ folktale collection and ‘national’ drama, and from there out into the streets into national festive celebration might thus be seen as one of the first manifestations of folklore as visual, three-dimensional national heritage in Iceland. The resulting ‘problem’ in Iceland (if it can be called a problem), however, was that these new, regularly repeated living representations of álfar as national figures in national costume seem to have had long-term influences on the way the álfar were visualised in Iceland. They burned themselves onto the retinas of their new urban audiences. The ‘original’ álfar of the folk legends appear to have been imagined as looking just like all the other inhabitants of Iceland, perhaps a little better off, a little cleaner and a little better looking, but usually relatively indistinguishable from the rest of the population. These new theatrical álfar had became supernatural, conservative, upper-class environmental nationalists, who found themselves condemned to live in national costume, and that is the way the situation remains in Iceland even today (especially on Twelfth Night). The idea of álfar being seen as more beautiful than their ‘hidden’ comrades (the huldufólk) is echoed in a new survey of Iceland

85 See the images in Sveinn Einarsson, Íslensk leiklist, II, pp. 363–364; A People’s The- atre Comes of Age, between pp. 173 and 174; and Þórunn Valdimarsdóttir and Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, Leikfélag Reykjavíkur, pp. 48, 99 and 148. According to Jón Viðar Jónsson, Nýársnóttin was first shown in the Icelandic settlement in Winnipeg in the 1880s. See http://www.leikminjasafn.is/annall/1880vest.html (last viewed 30 April, 2012). 86 Indriði Einarsson, Nýársnóttin (1872), p. 103. 87 The figures appear first on pp. 33–46 in Indriði Einarsson, Nýársnóttin (1907). See the photograph of these figures in Þórunn Valdimarsdóttir and Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, Leikfélag Reykjavíkur, p. 159. 88 Sveinn Einarsson, A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, pp. 286–294. iceland’s folklore, drama & visual national identity 323 belief attitudes that was conducted last year,89 and is also reflected in the recent images of the artist Brian Pilkington in a new popular book on Icelandic álfar designed for foreigners.90 In an article calling for a þjóðleikhús (national theatre) published in the Icelandic journal Skírnir in 1907, the playwright of Nýársnóttin, Indriði Einarsson, voiced his opinion that such a goal represented “efstu riminni í menningarstiganum . . . fyr en það er fengið eru Íslendingar ekki orðnir mentaþjóð” (the highest rung in the ladder of culture . . .; until that is accomplished the Icelanders cannot be considered a civilised people).91 These words summed up the thoughts of many in the fledgling new nations of the nineteenth century, for whom the establishment of a national theatre represented one of the necessary crowning achievements of nationhood, not simply because it meant you were now playing with the ‘big boys’, but because theatre as a phenomenon represented a combination of all the new artistic forms that had been drawing inspiration from the recently-collected raw materials of nationhood found in language, history and folklore. Theatre involved not merely static images or printed words, but the creation of a new world like that being forged by the nationalists, a ‘new reality’ which was meant to be both experienced and learnt from by the new ‘national’ audiences. The experience of the play Nýársnóttin in Iceland demonstrates the process going one step further. The play did not only offer a new ‘parallel’ reality. It also stepped off the stage and wandered out into the street to blend with the world outside, literally changing the nature of the environment and way the audiences experienced it.

89 See Terry Gunnell, “ ‘Það er til fleira á himni og jörðu, Hóras’: Kannanir á íslenskri þjóðtrú og trúarviðhorfum 2006–2007”, in Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson, ed., Rannsóknum í Félagsvísindum VIII (Félagsvísindadeild): Erindi flutt á ráðstefnu í desember 2007 (Reyk- javík: Félagsvísindastofnun, 2007), pp. 801–812. 90 Brian Pilkington and Terry Gunnell, The Hidden People of Iceland (Reykjavík: Mál og Menning/ Forlagið, 2008). 91 Indriði Einarsson, “Þjóðleikhús”, Skírnir (1907), p. 143; trans. in Sveinn Einarsson, A People’s Theatre Comes of Age, pp. 286–287.

Oral Traditions and the Making of the Finnish Nation

Pertti Anttonen

Oral traditions or ‘folklore’ have mainly become accessible to modern scholarship in collections and through the means of writing. Throughout the history of collecting oral traditions, their documentation has meant by definition their transformation into written representations. As documents of orality that scholars and collectors purport to save from oblivion, recordings of oral tradition are fragments of social and cultural performances that are transformed through textual documentation and representation into literary imitations of their original performances and their orality. Their separation and consequent manipulation and appropriation is founded upon particular means of making literary artefacts, the value and aesthetic qualities of which are historically specific and ideologically motivated. When discussing textualisation as a form of representation, it must be emphasised that textualisation is not a synonym for writing. It does not signify the literary expression of human thought and the writing down of mental ideas. Instead, textualisation is employed in recent research as a term that denotes the practices and processes of representing orality in written form. The term thus refers to the ways in which oral performances and orally expressed utterances are transformed into literary representations of orality. When we textualise oral expressions, we do not merely document them by writing down words that were sung or uttered. We create artefacts that function as representations of the original oral utterances. In addition, these artefacts, by their very existence as written documents, enter literary culture in the accomplishment of their representation of orality. In this respect, to textualise also means to ‘literalise’, that is, to transform oral utterances into literary representations that are to be read, interpreted and analyzed through reading, and by extension, to be preserved as textual documents that call for further reading as well as cultivation as specimens of cultural history and heritage.1

1 See discussion in Richard Bauman and Charles L. Briggs, Voices of Modernity: Lan- guage Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 15. 326 pertti anttonen

The key idea in both textualisation and literalisation is the act of representation. In practical terms, the act of representation consists of various sorts of editorial decisions and selections, which concern both the intended use of the edited materials and the practices by which the edited materials are made to reflect and correspond to the oral character of the original performances. It follows from this that the literary representations of oral performances receive a new textual quality that can be quite removed from the original oral performances even though they may appear to imitate such performances. Commas and semi-colons, indentations and capital letters are among the most common and easily recognisable literary devices here. Even though this type of textual representation can raise the question of accuracy, it is not, however, an issue of authenticity versus inauthenticity, as there is no such thing as unmediated textual representation. No written document of oral tradition can be ‘authentic’ in the sense of being free from any influence from literary culture and the way in which literary documents are created. Even though the purpose of textual documentation is not necessarily to produce literature in the high-cultural sense of the term, the end result is more literature than oral tradition. It is also worth noting that textualisation practices take place in dialogue with the reception of textualised representations. Reception here denotes the production of meaning in the various arenas of discourse in which the textualised and published works are appropriated in society. Reception does not, however, merely comprise of evaluations and interpretations made after the text has been finished: it is also present in the textualisation process as anticipations and horizons of expectation, concerning how the texts will be read, interpreted and used. In nation-state contexts the textualisation of oral tradition tends to become an issue of selecting and authorising national heritage, contextualising it with the production of nationalist modernity. These representational questions and practices are written into the very concept of ‘folklore’, which was coined by the English antiquarian William Thoms in 1846. Roger Abrahams has emphasised that by suggesting a terminological shift from popular antiquities, Thoms anglicised the project of collecting “manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc., of the olden time”,2 giving it “a particularly British

2 William Thoms, “Folklore”, in Alan Dundes ed., The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1965), p. 5. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 327 nationalist cast in an effort to bring his countrymen into line with other national literatures . . .”.3 In Germany, as discussed by Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs, the published collections by the Brothers Grimm “extended Herder’s attempts to revitalize German literature by inserting Volksdichtung collected from the marginal and disappearing Volk into its center”.4 In Finland, the Kalevala epic, compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the early 1830s, was received as the first important work in Finnish literature and continues to be valued as such.5 Consequently, ‘folklore’ in Finnish folklore studies is often paraphrased as ‘unwritten literature’.6 Literary culture has come to provide a major conceptual framework for folklore studies in both the categorisation of oral traditions into genres and the study and documentation of the oral production of culture. When documents of oral traditions are made accessible to modern scholarship, they are most typically organised into collections. Even though collections constitute depositories of significant cultural history, creating collections is not an unmediated form of representation. Instead, it is an activity pertaining to the politics of culture and history, contributing to the discourses on difference and similarity, community making, and the narrative construction of continuities and discontinuities. Collec- tions appear to depoliticise the communication which oral traditions as textual artefacts are extracted from. Yet, these artefacts are transformed into mimetic representations that create their own politics. They follow particular representational practices which often tend to conceal both the

3 Roger D. Abrahams, “Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics”, Journal of American Folklore 106 (1993) p. 9. 4 Bauman and Briggs, Voices of Modernity, pp. 197–198. 5 See Lauri Honko, “Nationella värden och internationellt forskningssamarbete. Introduktion: Nordiska institutet för folkdiktning (NIF) 1959–1979”, in Lauri Honko ed., Folklore och nationsbyggande i Norden (Turku: Nordic Institute of Folklore, 1980), p. 2; Lauri Honko, “Upptäckten av folkdiktning och nationell identitet i Finland”, in Lauri Honko ed., Folklore och nationsbyggande i Norden, pp. 33–51; Lauri Honko, “Kalevala: aitouden, tulkin- nan ja identiteetin ongelmia”, in Lauri Honko ed., Kalevala ja maailman eepokset. Kal- evalaseuran vuosikirja 65 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1987), pp. 130–133, published in English as “The Kalevala: The Processual View”, in Lauri Honko ed., Religion, Myth, and Folklore in the World’s Epics: The Kalevala and its Predecessors. Religion and Society 30 (Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 181–229; Pertti Karkama, Kansakunnan asialla. Elias Lönnrot ja ajan aatteet. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 843 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2001). 6 See for example Matti Kuusi, ed., Suomen kirjallisuus I. Kirjoittamaton kirjallisuus (Helsinki: Otava 1963); Matti Kuusi, Keith Bosley and Michael Branch, Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1977). 328 pertti anttonen subject and the subjectivity of the representational act, and, therefore, the authorisation of texts as documents of oral tradition. Collections both display and generate power. Archives and museums are useful, even essential, modern institutions for the presentation and representation of history and culture, but they are not innocent depositories of collectibles. Instead of providing unmediated material for research and learning about other times and other places, the collecting as well as the display of that which has been collected is always embedded in its own rhetorics and politics in terms of who is represented, how, for whom, and for what purposes.7 In addition to providing systematic access to sys- tematised information, archives and museums give meaning and value to their possessions by the very act of making them part of collections and entities constructed both aesthetically as well as with regard to their purpose in the representation of culture. Collections do not only create rationalised models and filters for subsequent collecting, that is, for the selection of that which ‘deserves’ to be collected. In addition, they also speak of the esteem for large quantities, on the one hand, and belief in their power and adequacy in metonymic representation, on the other. In addition to their position as part of collections, the argumentative value and force of oral traditions has derived from their conceptualisation as antiquities in a literary framework. An antiquity is an object that receives its value from being a rarity that comes from a distant timespace and carries, as it were, time and history in itself. In England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ‘popular antiquities’ denoted cultural forms and expressions regarded as being relics, remnants and curiosities of older times, that is, of pre-modernity. In this coinage, ‘popular’ refers to cultural, spatial and class-based otherness while ‘antiquity’ refers to its value as a rare representation of temporal otherness. Roger Abrahams has called antiquated documents of oral tradition “ruins in the landscape”.8 Such ruins are not mere glimpses of the past. They are monuments that both prescribe and legitimate a particular way of writing and representing

7 See for exmple James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Har- vard University Press, 1988); Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography”, in Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine eds, Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp. 386–443; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993 [1984]). 8 Abrahams, “Phantoms”, pp. 10–11. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 329 history. According to Abrahams, they endow a piece of land with ancient meanings and thus sacralise the landscape and its control as claimed territory. As antiquities retained mostly among the lower classes of society, oral traditions have been conceptualised as products of cultural otherness founded upon a class distinction. According to the Danish folklorist Bengt Holbek, the nineteenth-century interest in folk culture and especially the cultural ways of the rural population was directly related to the question of the redistribution of power between the bourgeois middle-class and the aristocracy.9 In order to fight the absolute monarchy and the political power of the elite, and in order to manipulate the lower classes into the hegemonic control of the middle-class, the bourgeoisie spoke in the name of the people, and in a nationalistic enlightenment project transformed the rural populations into enlightened citizens and made them aware of being nationals. Holbek describes the role given to oral traditions in this process as follows: It is the middle-class’s enthusiastic rediscovery of ‘the folk’ which raised the traditional songs and narratives to a status of ‘national’ treasures, in spite of the fact that very few of them are specific to any ethnic group and in spite of the fact that the impoverished persons who entertained themselves with this sort of thing had scarcely anything that could be called a national consciousness.10 Here Holbek makes an important point about the recognition of identities. Nationalistically minded scholars have tended to collect, index and display materials that have received their meanings as nationally significant symbols not from their performers but from the people who collect and display them. Folklore’s relation to nation and nationalism is here a question of whether the cognisance of particular folklore items, as well as their circulation, correlates with national borders. To claim nationalistic significance for material that, according to Holbek, does not correspond to the national boundaries in its area of appearance, is “misuse of folklore”, which “is still promulgated by less-informed writers and propagandists”, but which “has gradually been abandoned within professional circles in

9 Bengt Holbek, “Tacit Assumptions”, Folklore Forum 14 (2) (1981), pp. 121–140. Origi- nally published as Stiltiende forudsætninger, in Norveg 22 (1979), p. 133; see also Abrahams, “Phantoms”, pp. 3–4, 9–10. 10 Holbek, “Tacit Assumptions”, pp. 134–135. 330 pertti anttonen the course of this century”.11 It is unfortunate from the viewpoint of the history of scholarship that Holbek does not mention any names here. Whether the use of folklore material for territorial claims is ‘misuse’ or not cannot be judged solely on the basis of the material’s correlation—or lack of it—with given territorial boundaries. Holbek’s point undermines the power of symbolism and metonymy, which do not require such exact correlations. Symbolism and metonymy are argumentative relations. With its historical background in the legitimisation and sacralisation of territories with antiquities, as Abrahams has argued, and in the related Herderian idea of the nation as being embodied and voiced in traditional culture, especially in the poetry of the folk, the study of oral traditions has contributed to nation-state symbolism and metonymy by providing ‘ancient testimonies’ of history in the national language for the legitimisation of the political state as a national unit. By transforming tradition into heritage, and by metonymising tradition in the course of its representation, the study of oral traditions has created ‘national texts’ that are authored by the nationalistically conceived ‘folk’, who are heard to speak in the voice of ‘the nation’. This is not a coincidental historical development but a scholarly practice. Oral traditions do not become nationally significant and symbolic merely by existing somewhere, but through their transformation into literature and literary collections, through their adaptation and entextualisa- tion into material objects of documentation and display preserved in sites that are nationally and nationalistically relevant and significant, such as archives, museums, and universities. Scholars of oral tradition have contributed to the making of modernity and its nationalisation by collecting traditional cultural expressions in the margins of modernity, from among ‘the folk’, and by bringing these to the symbolic centres of society, institutions of history and ethnography in national capitals, sites that have obtained prominent roles in the representation of the nation’s history and culture. Even though engaging mainly with texts instead of material objects, folklore scholars have been active in what can be described as the monumentalisation of the patrimony. As put by the Argentinean anthropologist Nestor García Canclini, “In order for traditions today to serve to legitimise those who constructed or appropriated them, they must be

11 Bengt Holbek, “Tendencies in Modern Folk Narrative Research”, NIF Papers 4 (Turku: Nordic Institute of Folklore, 1992), pp. 5–6. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 331 staged.”12 This staging, while it has served national interests and employed nationalised raw materials, has at the same time been transnational in nature, based on models of representation that circulate internationally.

Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland The American folklorist William Wilson, an expert in the political use of folklore in Finland, describes the close connection between nationalism and research into oral traditions as follows: A driving force behind the development of folklore studies, nationalistic studies were in the beginning intimately associated with the efforts of zeal- ous scholar-patriots who collected and studied the lore of the common folk, not just to satisfy their intellectual curiosity or enlarge their understanding of human behavior, but primarily to lay the foundations on which their emergent nation-states would one day rest. In this movement, the nationalistic attempt to redraw political boundaries to fit the contours of ethnic bodies merged with the romantic emphasis on feeling and intuition, on nature, and on the past as the source of inspiration for the present.13 Such an account calls for a closer examination of the claim that scholars have studied oral traditions in order to lay the foundations on which their emergent nation-states would one day rest. What does this mean exactly? How do oral traditions provide the foundations of a nation-state? I shall here approach this question from the perspective of Finnish history and the use of folklore in Finnish nationalism.14 Wilson’s book Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (1976) is the most important work on the role of research into oral traditions in Finn- ish nation making. The book provides an outstanding and unsurpassed record of the extent to which nineteenth and twentieth-century folklorists in Finland participated in political and militaristic propaganda concerning the Finnish nation, its history, national characteristics, and geographic extensions. It well deserves the place it was given in the international discussion on folklore and politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

12 Néstor García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Moder- nity, Christopher L. Chiappari and Silvia L. Lopéz, trans. (Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press, 1995), p. 109. 13 William A. Wilson, “Nationalism”, in Mary Ellen Brown and Bruce A. Rosenberg eds, Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1998), p. 441. 14 Many of the points made in this article have been developed for my book Tradition Through Modernity: Postmodernism and the Nation-State in Folklore Scholarship (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005). 332 pertti anttonen

However, instead of critically analyzing nineteenth-century Roman- tic Nationalism, Wilson recounts the history of nationalistically oriented literary activism in nineteenth-century Finland from a conspicuously Herderian perspective. He sees the role of folklore in Finnish nationalism as following the course of events that Herder described for Germany.15 Accordingly, his “principal concern” in the book is to examine “the Finns’ attempt, through folklore, to discover their past”.16 Because of this narrative agenda, the introductory section in Wilson’s book is more of a celebration of the national significance of folklore and folklore scholarship in Finland than a political analysis of its role in Finn- ish society. It functions as a means for Wilson to show his love for folklore scholarship and his respect for Finland.17 Without in any way questioning the overall value of Wilson’s seminal work, I wish to point here to a particular account of Finnish history that appears in the preface of the book. Describing the historical process by which Finland was annexed to the Russian Empire, Wilson writes as follows: Fragmented as they [the Finns] were into several dialect groups and lacking the binding ties of a common literature and a written record of their national past, they were ill-prepared to face the century of Russian rule and attempted Russification of their culture which lay ahead. Yet in a little over a century they had coalesced and won their freedom.18 This account conveys a number of arguments that are worth examining. First, it presents the Finns as one historical subject speaking one language, but fragmented into dialect groups. Elsewhere in the book, somewhat dif- ferently, Wilson says that the Finns were “divided into separate linguistic camps”.19 Secondly, the Finns have a national past but no written record of it. Third, they have their own culture (note the singular), but this faces Russification. Fourth, they came together and became free. Wilson’s account corresponds well to a commonly held notion that the nation-building process in nineteenth-century Finland followed Herder’s ideas for what has since then been called cultural, romantic or ethnic

15 William A. Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (Bloomington: Indi- ana University Press, 1976), p. 30. 16 Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism, p. 6. 17 See William A. Wilson, “Partial Repentance of a Critic: The Kalevala, Politics, and the United States”, in Alan Jabbour and James Hardin, eds, Folklife Annual 1986. A Publication of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1987), pp. 81–91. 18 Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism, p. ix. 19 Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism, p. 27. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 333 nationalism. According to this notion, the emergence of nationalism in Finland was a call for independence by an oppressed people with an indigenous culture, a language of its own, and collective oral traditions that manifest the innate unity of the Finnish people. The Finns are seen as making up a primordial but dormant nation whose history prior to its political independence constitutes a narrative about being on the road to that independence. This image thus conveys a heroic narrative about the Finns’ historical project for modern nationhood, and the collecting of folklore is in direct service of this historical project. What is especially noteworthy in Wilson’s arguments is that they at the same time both include and exclude the Swedish speakers from the category of the Finns. The notion of the people speaking one language but being fragmented into dialect groups refers to the country’s Finnish speakers only. The same applies to the notion that the Finns had no written record of their past. However, those who are said to have coalesced are the Finnish speakers and the Swedish speakers. In addition, Wilson includes the Swedish speakers in the category of the Finns by describing the mostly literary-oriented nationalist activities of the educated Swed- ish speakers. These were “aspiring young nationalists” who brought “the wealth of [folk] poetry” to “the attention of their countrymen”.20 Wilson is far from being alone in conceptualising the Finns in a way that both includes and excludes the Swedish speakers. In fact, this is a paradox that characterises much of the nineteenth-century nationalist perspective on Finnish national culture, promoted by the Fennoman movement. Its legacy and continued influence can be witnessed in today’s political discourses and to some extent also in humanistic and social scientific scholarship.21 It manifests the wish to acknowledge the contribution of the educated Swedish speakers in the making of Finnish-language oral traditions part of the heritage of Finnish national culture, but it also manifests the simultaneous desire to define this national culture in ways that only acknowledge Finnish-language cultural products as its representations.

20 Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism, p. 31, see also William A. Wilson, “Sibelius, the Kalevala, and Karelianism”, in Glenda Dawn Goss ed., The Sibelius Companion (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 47. 21 In a recent volume on the cultural history of the Kalevala epic, the Finns are said to constitute a nation that for centuries was lacking the freedom to build its own culture in its own language and participate freely in cooperation between nations. Pertti Karkama, “Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803)”, in Ulla Piela, Seppo Knuuttila and Pekka Laak- sonen eds, Kalevalan kulttuurihistoria (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2008), p. 127. 334 pertti anttonen

Much of the national value of these ‘Finnish’ cultural products derives from placing them in opposition to the role of both Swedish-language culture and other ‘foreign’, such as Russian, elements and influences. This opposition has contributed to the making of Finland a country in which the idea of ethnic homogeneity and the sense of ethnic solidarity among Finnish speakers continue to play a significant role in the construction of the national and the selection of its representations and symbols of unity. Although Finland is officially bilingual, popular discourses on Finn- ish identity are characterised by the notion of an intimate link between the nation and the Finnish language.22 In the connection made between language, nation, history, oral traditions and cultural identity, it is mainly the Finnish language as well as the (constructed and reconstructed) pasts of the Finnish speakers that are to be shared in order for the Finns to make a nation and have a cultural identity of their own. Such a perspective tends to position the Swedish speakers, among others, as a cultural ‘other’, and exclude their pasts from that which is to be shared. The position of Swedish language and its speakers continues to be one of the core issues in the making of the Finnish nation and in conceptualising Finnishness and Finnish culture. Swedish was the official language of the autonomous duchy in the nineteenth century, but gradually Finnish gained ground and surpassed it in national significance. Since 1863, Finn- ish could be used when dealing with the authorities, from 1883 onwards civil servants were obliged to use Finnish when issuing documents, and in 1892 Finnish became an official language equal to Swedish. In 1906 Finnish became the first official language, placing Swedish second. After Finland gained independence as a state, the position of the Swedish language in society was guaranteed in the 1919 constitution and in the 1922 ‘Language Act’. The Swedish language is not a minority language in legal terms, but a second national language besides Finnish. The position of the Swedish speakers in Finland, and their ambiguous role in the production of the category of the national, must be seen in the historical framework established in the process of the state building of the early and mid-1800s. In the new political situation that emerged after the eastern provinces of Sweden were annexed to the Russian Empire in 1809, the making of the Finnish nation meant, first and foremost, the

22 See Pasi Saukkonen, Suomi, Alankomaat ja kansallisvaltion identiteettipolitiikka. Tutkimus kansallisen identiteetin poliittisuudesta, empiirinen sovellutus suomalaisiin ja hol- lantilaisiin teksteihin (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1999). oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 335 construction of an idea of Finnishness that would be recognised as fundamentally different from both Russianness and Swedishness. This political goal was epitomised in the famous slogan “Swedes we are not, Russians we do not wish to become, let us therefore be Finns”. The slogan is commonly, but not necessarily accurately, attributed to the exiled political activist Adolf Iwar Arwidsson.23 For some nineteenth-century nationalists and for a greater number of their descendants, the drawing of distinction vis-à-vis Sweden and Swed- ishness eventually came to also include the Swedishness of the country’s Swedish-speaking population. The afore-mentioned slogan also laid the foundation for the discursive practice of defining Finnishness through negation: on the basis of what it is not and what it is separated from, giving Finland a border identity between Sweden and Russia. The political logic of this boundary making was to institutionalise a language of symbolism that would unite the population under a single national identity. In practice it also meant the marginalisation of some of the culturally and linguistically heterogeneous elements within this population. Yet, as emphasised by many present-day scholars, Finland can be characterised as a mixture of ethnic-genealogical and civic-territorial conceptions of nationality. This can be seen, for example, in the way in which the ethnic-genealogical conception of nationality functioned in the making of the Finnish nation-state in the nineteenth century as a means to construct symbolically and ideologically the ‘people’, who, in accordance with the civic-territorial conception of nationality, came to be regarded as the democratic holders of power in the modernising state and the emerging civil society. Folk symbols became a crucial issue in the competition over political representation. For example, the Fennoman nationalists as a political party claimed to speak on behalf of ‘the people’, and that they— better than anyone else—represented the people’s will.24 This points to the crucial interlinking of the concepts of the ‘folk’ and the ‘demos’ in Finnish nationalism, albeit that the link was temporarily

23 See Derek Fewster, Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History. Studia Fennica Historica 11 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2006), p. 116. 24 See Ilkka Liikanen, Fennomania ja kansa. Joukkojärjestäytymisen läpimurto ja Suom- alaisen puolueen synty. Historiallisia tutkimuksia 191 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1995), pp. 170–171, 280–282; Ilkka Liikanen, “Kansalaisen synty. Fennomania ja modernin politiikan läpimurto”, Tiede & Edistys 4 (1997), pp. 342–351; Irma Sulkunen, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura 1831–1892. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 952 (Hel- sinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2004), pp. 169–171. 336 pertti anttonen broken during the 1918 Civil War. Representation is a political act when people represent themselves through their elected representatives, and when politicians speak and act in the name of ‘the people’ with a collective mandate received from the electorate. Politicians do not, however, speak in the name of ‘the folk’. The ‘folk’ is present in cultural representations, such as folk poetry documents, collections of proverbs, riddles, folk songs and folk costumes. Unlike ‘the people’, ‘the folk’ does not represent itself. The folk is not a category of self-ascription; it can only be represented symbolically. Its presence in documentable cultural materials is based on the act of interpretation and signification. For this reason, an important question in the study of the modern meanings of oral tradition and oral history concerns how the cultural representation of ‘the folk’ is linked to the political representation of ‘the people’. This is, on the one hand, an issue of legitimating political power with symbols deriving from traditional culture. On the other hand, it is an issue of constructing collective identity with the idea that representations of ‘the folk’ directly point to the qualities attributed to ‘the demos’. The Kalevala epic, for example, became a representation of folk tradition that was used to argue for the Finnish-speakers’ modern capabilities, their cultural capacities and especially their competence in state-formation. The linking of the ‘folk’ with the ‘demos’ is also seen in the way in which citizenship came to be conceptualised in Finland, especially in the Finnish language. According to the Finnish sociologist Risto Alapuro, the Finnish nationalists perceived citizenship as an issue of “legal equality of rights and duties, especially rights to social and political participation”.25 Since ethnic solidarity conditioned the principle of political participation, “the idea of citizenship (kansalaisuus) became intimately related to that of nationality (kansallisuus)”.26 This intimate relationship can also be seen in the close lexical similarity of the two terms. As discussed by Henrik Stenius, a Finnish historian of concepts, the concept of the citizen was translated into Finnish in the early 1860s by Elias Lönnrot, who had previously compiled the national epic. In Lönnrot’s translation, the concept of the citizen lost its reference to European discourses on jurisdiction

25 Risto Alapuro, “Social Classes and Nationalism: The North-East Baltic”, in Michael Branch ed., National History and Identity: Approaches to the Writing of National History in the North-East Baltic Region Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Helsinki: Finnish Litera- ture Society, 1999), p. 116. 26 Alapuro, “Social Classes and Nationalism”, p. 114. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 337 and came to denote a member of a national community.27 The Finnish translation and signification of the concept of the citizen exemplifies the emphasis laid by Fennoman nationalists on collective identity. In a similar vein, the construction of Finnishness meant the establishment of a national culture that would be recognised as being founded only on ‘Finnish’ elements, even though, at the same time, “the focal political principles of the Swedish era were handed down in the structures of the administration and legislation that Finland was entitled to maintain”.28 The class structure dominated by extensive peasant land ownership was another legacy of the Swedish political and social system.29 The symbolic significance of these political institutions was downplayed, while the symbolic significance of ‘Finnish’ history and Finnish-language folklore was emphasised.30 Consequently, the ‘Finnish alternatives’ in history, literature and oral traditions—meaning mainly the cultural practices of the rural Finnish- speaking population—did not, in precise terms, lay the foundation for national culture or the eventual political independence. Rather, folk symbolism served in the production of politically preferred distinctions and that way contributed to the consolidation of the already existing claim that Finland constituted a nation of its own. Since the constitutional status of the autonomous Grand Duchy was a matter of dispute with the representatives of the Imperial administration,31 Finnish nation building was comprised of actions that were to strengthen the country’s separate identity within the Russian Empire and make its rather abstract nationness more concrete. This concretisation included a set of representations

27 Henrik Stenius, “Kansalainen”, [Citizen] in M. Hyvärinen, J. Kurunmäki, K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen, and H. Stenius, eds, Käsitteet liikkeessä. Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsite- historia [Concepts in Motion. The Conceptual History of the Finnish Political Culture] (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2003), pp. 309–362; Henrik Stenius, “The Finnish Citizen: How a Translation Emasculated the Concept”, Redescriptions. Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual Change, Vol. 8, (2003), pp. 171–188. 28 Teija Tiilikainen, Europe and Finland: Defining the Political Identity of Finland in West- ern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), p. 120. 29 Risto Alapuro, Suomen älymystö Venäjän varjossa (Helsinki: Tammi, 1997); Alapuro, “Social Classes and Nationalism”. 30 Max Engman, “The Finland-Swedes: A Case of a Failed National History?”, in Michael Branch ed., National History and Identity: Approaches to the Writing of National History in the North-East Baltic Region Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Helsinki: Finnish Litera- ture Society, 1999), p. 169. 31 See Osmo Jussila, Seppo Hentilä and Jukka Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy to Modern State: A Political History of Finland since 1809. David and Eva-Kaisa Arter, trans. (London: Hurst, 1999). 338 pertti anttonen that could be jointly labelled national culture and/or national literature. The role that Finnish-language oral traditions had in this was to provide for such representations.

Antiquation as Modernisation One of the key elements in nineteenth-century Finnish nationalism was the projection of its own history far back in the prehistory of the state. The Herderian link between language, history and the nation was not, however, the only politico-philosophical foundation in this. Hegel’s ideas of the national spirit, the spirit of the people (Volksgeist) that has developed in the course of history were also instrumental. Accordingly, the question of whether there had been a heroic age in the ancient past of the Finnish people came to be widely debated in the 1830s and 1840s.32 The imaginary national history depicted in the Kalevala epic provided a myth of origin that would present Finland as a primordial and an innate national unit. The rhetorical device of projecting the foundation of the Finnish nation into prehistory made it appear as if the nation had existed first, before the emergence of the state, and had existed since time immemorial. The state came to be seen as having formed as a result of a natural—albeit an arduous—national development. This development did not take place without strong religious overtones. Especially for Johan Vilhelm Snellman, the leading figure in the Fennoman movement in the 1840s and 1850s, the nation-making process was a struggle for regaining political power to an innate entity that was a chosen people, a nation by the grace of God,33 but whose nationness had been suppressed for centuries by forced Christianisation and Western civilisation.34 The same idea of Finland having been forcefully Christianised was put forward in the most influential book published in the Finnish language, The Book of Our Country (Maamme kirja or Boken om vårt land) by

32 For example, Robert Tengström, “Finska folket såsom det skildras i Kalewala”, Jouka- hainen II (Helsingfors: Österbotniska Afdelningen, 1845); see also Väinö Kaukonen, Lönnrot ja Kalevala (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1979), pp. 104–107. 33 See Aira Kemiläinen, “Kansallisen tehtävän ajatus historiassa”, Historiallinen aikakauskirja 1980 (1), p. 4. 34 J.V. Snellman, J.V. Snellmanin kootut teokset. II. Valtio-oppi, Oikean ehdoton pätevyys, Kansallisuus ja kansallisuusaate. Suomentanut Heikki Lehmusto (Porvoo: Werner Söder- ström Osakeyhtiö, 1928), p. 12; see also Kyösti Skyttä and Päivi Skyttä, Tuntematon Snell- man. (Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1981), p. 128. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 339

Zachris Topelius.35 After being in the making for nineteen years, the book was published in Swedish in 1875 and was translated into Finnish in 1876. The aim of the book was not, however, to argue against Christianity but to present Finns (meaning here both Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers) as being divinely guided and guarded by the Christian God in their nation-making, despite the violent nature of the original Christian conversion, which after the Reformation could be negatively attributed to Roman Catholic Christianity. The Finnish religious scholar Kati Mikkola has recently argued that Topelius wrote his book about the Finnish people, their land, their traditions and national characteristics in order to make up another Bible, a holy book of divinely legitimated Finnish patriotism. While the Old Testament stands as a prophecy for the New Testament, and the New Testament fulfils that prophecy, the Book of Our Country was presented by Topelius as a book that in its nationalism stands as the fulfilment of the biblical prophecy.36 This exemplifies the general trend of making Lutheranism one of the key elements in Finnish nationalism. Lutheranism also characterises most nineteenth-century presentations and representations of folk culture within national culture. The explicit goal was to make the non-Christian aspects of folklore both acceptable and presentable in the public sphere of the Lutheran-minded intelligentsia, as well as to enhance the linking of non-Christian folklore to the national framework by presenting it as national prehistory. Accordingly, the nationalisation of pre-Christian paganism was contingent with the Lutheranisation of the national sphere. Pre-Christianity came to be seen as the historical time when the nation had been in its purest state, and united in a true sense, providing thus a model for future nationalist aspirations. The making of the Kalevala epic into a national symbol was not in contradiction to the Lutheranisation process, even though the epic sources were collected from Orthodox Christians in the East and contained direct references to pre-Christian religious concepts and ideas. In compiling the epic, Lönnrot built up a narrative plot which starts from the creation of the world, depicts what is claimed to be an ancient heroic age, and ends

35 [Z.] Topelius, Maamme kirja. Vesa Mäkinen, ed. (Porvoo, Helsinki, Juva: WSOY, 1985 [1875]). 36 Kati Mikkola, “Suomen kehkeytyminen omaksi itsekseen—Herder ja Topeliuksen Maamme kirja”, in Sakari Ollitervo and Kari Immonen eds, Herder, Suomi ja Eurooppa. (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2006), p. 421; Kati Mikkola, “Maamme kirja Kalevalan tulkitsijana”, in Ulla Piela, Seppo Knuuttila and Pekka Laaksonen eds, Kalevalan kulttuurihistoria (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2008), pp. 183–188. 340 pertti anttonen the story in the arrival of Christianity and the emergence of the Finnish nation-state. This was not merely a mytho-historical description of the birth of a nation but a narrative that contained a rhetorical means for its own sacralisation. Lönnrot’s epic narrative followed a plot structure familiar from Christian church history: the narrator starts off with the creation of the world and ends the narrative in his own times. The first adoption of this model in Finland was Chronologia sacra, published by the theologian Johannes Flachsenius in 1692. One of the characteristics in this ‘sacred’ history of the nation is the lack of reference to any forms of Christianity known in the actual history of Finland or the Finnish-speaking regions. The epic narrative in the Kalevala makes no reference to the era of Roman Catholicism, which characterised religiosity during the first centuries of Christianity in the Nordic countries. It makes no reference to Russian Orthodoxy either, which was and still is the dominant religion in the areas in which most of the epic sources were recorded. The epic is silent about these, because it is designed to depict pre-Christian prehistory—in a modern Christian spirit—and end in the arrival of Christianity which unites religion with the nation. The interlinking of nation and religion makes an easily comprehensible reference to the Lutheran Protestantism of nineteenth-century Finland, Lönnrot’s own times. The epic thus depicts a ‘national’ prehistory, an ancient time when Finns were allegedly a united people, before the arrival of Catholi- cism and the Swedish rule, and ends with the return of national unity in Protestant nationalism. In political terms, the making of the Finnish nation meant for the Fennoman nationalists the political integration of Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers, as well as the integration of the different social classes within the territorial unit. This was regarded as entailing the adoption of Finnish as a state language and the symbolic use of the ‘people’s culture’ or ‘folk tradition’ in the construction of national heritage. This would not, however, mean that civilisation in Finland should be based on the cultural achievements of the Finnish-speaking and illiterate folk. The national significance ascribed to selected representations of folk culture did not mean that the elite would reject their education-based culture for the culture of the uneducated. The educated elite remained distinct from the ‘people’ but identified with the people in the project for a national language and culture, in the name of consolidating the national entity. This positioning eventually produced a double-sided discourse of both creating and dismantling class differences, which to a great extent characterises Finnish society even today. The discourse can be described as a oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 341 mixture of elitism and populism in which, as put by Alapuro, “the educated class had to be culturally one with the people”,37 as if deriving from the folk. Accordingly, the Fennomans started to include themselves in the same category of ‘Finnishness’ that they had constructed for the ‘people’, and by doing so, they placed both the ‘people’ and themselves in opposition to the ‘foreign’ upper class that spoke a ‘foreign’ language.38 Language and class thus became major factors for distinguishing not only ‘Finnish- ness’ from ‘Swedishness’ in Finland but also for distinguishing the ‘people’ and those excluded from this category. In addition to the Lutheran framework, the key ideological elements in the production of folkloric national culture and national symbolism in Finland include the use of oral tradition in the construction of national ancestry and the discursive practice of drawing politically desirable links to the ancient speakers of Finnish and Finnish-related languages. What is most characteristic in these elements, as far as their social dynamics is concerned, is that they bypass the question of social stratification. The tendency to draw ancestral links from the Finnish speaking agrarian ‘folk’ of the earlier centuries to the present-day ‘ordinary Finns’ is a discursive act in the art of creating ethnic solidarity that is supposed to transgress markers of social class within the language group. The same applies to the similarly common tendency to speak of the Finnish speakers of earlier centuries and millennia as the forefathers of present-day Finns. Because of the wish to be “culturally one with the people”, the Fenno- man elite started to perceive the peasants as ‘us’. In the discourse on the national in the imagined national community, ‘their’ oral culture and folklore became ‘our’ traditions and heritage. The Swedish-speaking elite, in other words, created a symbolic image of themselves as if originating from the Finnish-speaking people and claimed both participation and ownership in the people’s culture that they had raised to a central position in national symbolism.39 This is not, however, a question of class politics only, but also concerns the political significance of language. In this context, I wish to present two concepts that I have borrowed from Vivien Law, the historian of linguistic thought. These are language-intrinsic myths and language-extrinsic

37 Alapuro op. cit., p. 114. 38 Risto Alapuro, “Sivistyneistön ambivalentti suomalaisuus”, in Pertti Alasuutari and Petri Ruuska eds, Elävänä Euroopassa. Muuttuva suomalainen identiteetti (Tampere: Vastapaino, 1998), p. 181. 39 See also Sulkunen, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, pp. 26–27. 342 pertti anttonen myths. Language-intrinsic myths include beliefs about a language’s purity, elegance, euphoniousness, expressiveness, and its lexical resources, such as the size of its vocabulary.40 Language-extrinsic myths include beliefs about a language’s origins, antiquity, genetic affiliations, destiny, its match to its speakers and their national character, or its match to Nature.41 Language-extrinsic myths are intertwined with ethnic myths, myths of origin, of descent, and of homeland. Thus they equate the category of the ethnos with that of a particular language, conflating language with ethnicity. According to Law, language-intrinsic myths connect with inclusive nationalism, while language-extrinsic myths are both favoured and deployed in exclusive nationalism.42 In Finnish nation-making, language myths continue to be central elements in the process that started in the early nineteenth century. In many ways, the social and political functions of language are both mythical and myth-producing. Language is not merely a pragmatic issue concerning the most appropriate system of signs for representing and communicating ideas. It is at the same time closely linked to ethnopolitics, the ethnicisa- tion of the speakers of a particular language, the relationship established between different ethnicities in the production of the national, and the construction of historical narratives about languages and their speakers in the legitimisation of the particular relations. When examining the link between language and the nation in Fin- land, it is of great importance to note that Fennoman nationalism did not merely contribute to the changing of the state language of Finland from Swedish to Finnish. Because of close links to contemporary ethnopoliti- cally charged theories of linguistic relations, the gradual change of state language was accompanied by a change in the ideological position of language in the nation-state. In the mid-1800s, the Finnish language was still regarded by most educated people as unfit for education, civilisation and modern artistic expression. The use of selected representations of oral traditions, such as the Kalevala epic, to argue for the suitability of Finnish for these purposes both modernised and antiquated the Finnish language—or more precisely, modernised it by antiquating it. While the

40 Vivien Law, “Language Myths and the Discourse of Nation-Building in Georgia”, in Graham Smith, Vivien Law, Andrew Wilson, Annette Bohr and Edward Allworth, eds, Nation-Building in the Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 175, 188. 41 Law, “Language Myths”, p. 175. 42 Law, “Language Myths”, pp. 195–196. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 343

Finnish language was lexically developed to meet the requirements of a state language as well as the requirements of communication in modern industry, trade and education, it was at the same time embedded with myths about its origins and its Finno-Ugric antiquity, as well as the origins and antiquity of its speakers. These myths can be categorised as language- extrinsic myths. ‘Ancient Finns’—the authors of the antiquated genres of oral poetry43—became the predominant image of ancestry, history and authenticity, signalling the history of the kind of Finnishness that was to constitute a crucial part of the symbolic capital in the construction of the country’s modernity. The simultaneously modernised and antiquated Finnish language became one of the most central ideological ‘glues’ within the emerging nation-state. The myths about the language and its speakers became some of the central elements in the ideological construction of Finnishness and in the making of the Finnish speakers the ‘core nation’ within the nation- state. In addition to its new position as a state language, Finnish received its modern legitimisation from its alleged antiqueness and from its ethnic- genetic affiliations. The connection across the centuries and the millennia was the antiquated Finnish language, which in addition to antiquity pointed to modernity. Compiled out of Finnish-language oral poetry mainly from Karelia on both sides of the Finnish-Russian border, the Kalevala epic became an antiquated representation of both Finnish-language and Finnish culture. It was new but it stood for the old, embodying antiquity in a modern format for a modern purpose. Its celebration as the national epic came to epitomise the mythological relationship between antiquity and modernity in Finnish nationalism. It made a desired link to Finno-Ugric antiquity, but as such it could be used to argue for the Finnish speakers’ capabilities in Western modernity, especially their competence in state-formation.

History as Progress v. History as Tradition The social value of the representations of oral traditions was not only in their reference to history, ancestry and heritage. Even more important was the emerging notion and belief that constructions of history and heritage could prove that Finnish speakers, too, can contribute to ‘national life’ and modern civilisation. Because of this agenda, the central goal in the

43 Cf. Susan Stewart, “Notes on Distressed Genres”, Journal of American Folklore 104 (1991), p. 7. 344 pertti anttonen discourse on oral traditions was not their preservation as indigenous culture. Neither was it the promotion of cultural diversity within the national sphere. Instead, representations of oral tradition were nationalised and made into a metonymy of a culturally homogenising and politically unifying national community. Oral tradition was transformed through folkloristic collecting and its textualisation practices into ‘pre-literate’ literature, into written epics and other types of published collections—and eventually, into consumables of national tradition, history and heritage. It is worth emphasising that for Snellman, the leading Fennoman philosopher, the value of oral tradition was not in its alleged capacity to manifest a ‘natural’ and therefore an unhistorical nation, as was argued by Herder. Instead, the value of oral tradition was in its potential to indicate the presence of a national spirit, which he considered to lead individuals to make “moral and rational social contracts”44 and thus promote national development and civilisation.45 In addition to pointing to nationalised antiquity, the value of oral tradition lay thus in its capacity to promote and enhance modernity and a modern civil society. For the later generations of Fennomans, the use of oral traditions continued to stand for the antiquarian foundation of national civilisation. The latter half of the nineteenth century was the period in which the study of folklore was established as an independent branch of scholarship, but the leadership in the Fennoman movement mainly saw symbolic and political value in the enterprise. As discussed by the Finnish historian Irma Sulkunen, representations of folklore served to legitimate both the national movement and the national polity.46 At the same time, the use of folkloric symbolism increased in a variety of organisational activities and commercial contexts.47 The Finnish sociologist Risto Alapuro has pointed out that the national movement in Finland, unlike many other such movements in Europe, did not need to argue for a state-unit because it already existed, albeit as an autonomy within the Russian Empire. What it did need to argue for,

44 Pertti Karkama, “The Individual and National Identity in J.V. Snellman’s Young- Hegelian Theory”, in Michael Branch ed., National History and Identity: Approaches to the Writing of National History in the North-East Baltic Region Nineteenth and Twentieth Centu- ries (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1999), p. 148. 45 See also Karkama, “The Individual and National Identity”, pp. 188, 200–201. 46 Sulkunen, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, pp. 204–205, 216–218. 47 See Pertti Anttonen and Matti Kuusi, Kalevala-lipas. Uusi laitos (Helsinki: Suomal- aisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1999), pp. 290–297. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 345 though, was history.48 History was considered the mark of civilisation for a modern nation, and in Hegelian thinking national history, especially the heroic age in its antiquity, served to indicate the presence of the national spirit, which would guide peoples in their state formation. In addition to the progression to nationhood from a heroic age in antiquity, history meant the presence and function of political institutions. In an evolutionary framework, peoples without history in the ‘higher’ national sense of the term were regarded as standing on a lower step of development. As stated by the pioneering ethnographer Matthias Alexander Cas- trén in his inaugural speech on being appointed to the chair of Finnish language in 1851, ethnography was the new science for the study of the history of those who have no written history.49 Instead of progression to nationhood, history in their context meant (evidence of ) the continuation of immemorial oral traditions and traditional practices. Finland as a ‘Finnish’ conception was in the first half of the nineteenth century considered by many intellectuals to lack a history of its own. One of these intellectuals was Zachris Topelius, who in a public lecture in 1843 stated that a national history would require the self-consciousness of nationality and the existence of judicial and political institutions. According to Topelius, the Finnish people did not have these before 1809.50 Almost two decades earlier, the historian and philosopher J.J. Tengström had presented similar ideas but with reference to both Swedish and Finn- ish speakers.51 Even though Topelius changed his opinion and in many of his later literary works set out to depict ‘Finnish’ elements in pre-1809

48 Alapuro, Suomen älymystö Venäjän varjossa, p. 18. 49 M.A. Castrén, Nordiska resor och forskningar. 4: Ethnologiska föreläsningar öfver altaiska folken (Helsingfors: Finska Litteratur-Sällskapets tryckeri, 1857), p. 8; see also Toivo Vuorela, Ethnology in Finland Before 1920 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1977), p. 20; Pekka Isaksson, “Saamelaiset kansakunnan rakentamisen marginaalissa”, [The Sami in the Margin of Nation-Building] Kosmopolis 27 (1997) (3), p. 61; Juha Pentikäinen, “Castré- nilainen ‘pohjoisen etnografian’ paradigma”, in Anna Maria Viljanen and Minna Lahti eds, Kaukaa haettua. Kirjoituksia antropologisesta kenttätyöstä (Helsinki: Suomen Antropolog- inen Seura, 1997), p. 233; Pekka Isaksson, Kumma kuvajainen. Rasismi rotututkimuksessa, rotuteorioiden saamelaiset ja suomalainen fyysinen antropologia (Inari: Kustannus Puntsi Oy, 2001), p. 205. 50 Zachris Topelius, “Äger finska folket en historie?” Joukahainen II (Helsingfors: Öster- botniska Afdelningen, 1845), pp. 214–217. 51 Juhana Jaakko Tengström, “Muutamista Suomen kirjallisuuden ja kulttuurin esteistä”, in E.N. Setälä, V. Tarkiainen and Vihtori Laurila, eds, Suomen kansalliskirjallisuus VII. Kansallisia herättäjiä, romanttisia runoilijoita, tiedemiehiä ja tutkimusmatkailijoita 1800- luvun alkupuolelta. Ruotsin kielestä suomentanut E.V.I. Karjalainen (Helsinki: Otava, 1931), pp. 311–312. Originally published as Om några hinder för Finlands litteratur och cultur. Aura I 1817, pp. 69–90, Aura II 1818, pp. 93–129. 346 pertti anttonen history, the idea of the Finnish people—meaning the Finnish-speakers— lacking their own history remained influential. It is an unquestionable fact that the collecting of oral traditions has provided a significant share of cultural history where written history was lacking. Indeed, the value of oral poetry has since the eighteenth century been mainly placed on its ability to yield information on the history and culture of the common people. However, since history was in nineteenth- century nationalism regarded as a major ingredient in making a people a nation, classifying the Finnish-speaking Finns as a people without history in the ‘higher’ national (or Hegelian) sense of the term would go against the political goal of nationalist activists to make Finland a recognised national unit. Therefore, it was instrumental for the Hegelian-minded Fennomans to argue that the Finns (the Finnish speakers) have a national spirit and are able to create a ‘national life’. In this project, ethnography on Finnish culture—in addition to providing the history of those who had no history—was expected to unearth the antique layers of the nation’s ‘childhood’. This antiquity, and the historical progression away from it, would then serve to legitimate the idea of Finland as a modern nation with history. Because of this political logic, Finnish ethnography and collecting of oral traditions was not a mere quest for cultural survivals or the history of people without history. Neither was it a mere nostalgic project to collect emblems of tradition threatened to fall into oblivion, even though collectors and researchers have tended to engage in the rhetoric of decadence, and to locate themselves on the threshold of an ending era and witness the loss of immemorial traditions.52 Despite the discourse on modernity as loss, it can be deciphered that Finnish ethnography has been committed to modernisation, the spread of literacy and civilisation, education and science, patriotic service of the modern nation-state—and to the use of these qualities as means of creating distinction vis-à-vis those excluded from the category of the national. Among the many types of epics in the world, the Kalevala can be classified as a traditional one since the bulk of its contents correspond to the oral poetry on which its literary form is based. It serves to document some of the traditional folk poetry of the Finnish-speaking populations. Yet, at the same time it is a modern epic, since one of its major functions in the society in which it was published was to contribute to the produc-

52 Seppo Knuuttila, Tyhmän kansan teoria. Näkökulmia menneestä tulevaan. Tietolipas 129 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1994), pp. 18–20. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 347 tion of national discourse on the basis of its traditionality. Since it was taken to suggest that Finland had antiquity in its prehistory, it argued for contemporary Finland’s modernity. The link that it was said to create in time simultaneously stood for the distance between the Fennoman present and the past it imagined. The bygone-ness of the imagined antiquity was a central element in its social value, as it indicated historical movement. With antiquity in its past, the Finnish nation could be modern and develop further, unlike the peoples without history that were doomed to live in the past, in tradition, in absence of progress. Such peoples were, among others, the Sámi, the Karelians and the Ingri- ans, who are linguistic ‘relatives’ within the Finno-Ugric language group and have lived on the margins of Finnishness. Unlike the Sámi, both the Karelians and Ingrians were integrated into Finnish nation making by giving them a role in representing Finnish antiquity.53 This antiquity did not provide them with history in the national—or Hegelian—sense of the term. Topelius characterised the Karelians as “children who lag behind the Finns in national development”54 The Finns, on the other hand, have a nation that has developed into a state. Except for Estonians and Hungar- ians, the ‘kindred peoples’ (speakers of Finno-Ugric languages) lack what is central to the definition of Finnishness: history, national development, modernity, and nation-state identity. Their culture points to the history of the (Finnish-speaking) Finns, but they are different from the Finns because they have stayed in that history. When Topelius gave his lecture in 1843 on the question of whether the Finnish people have a history, he had regarded the (Finnish-speaking) Finns as political children. According to Topelius, the Finnish people mentally constituted a nationality, but in their “thousand-year political childhood” they were unable to turn this unit into a state.55 The (Finnish- speaking) Finns were thus seen as being under-developed in the art of state formation. Later Topelius replaced the Finns with Karelians as such

53 See also Lotte Tarkka, “Karjalan kuvaus kansallisena retoriikkana. Ajatuksia karelianismin etnografisesta asetelmasta”, in Seppo Knuuttila and Pekka Laaksonen eds, Runon ja rajan tiellä. Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 68 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1989); Hannes Sihvo, Karjalan kuva. Karelianismin taustaa ja vaiheita autonomian aikana (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1973), pp. 356–357; Arno Survo, Magian kieli. Neuvosto-Inkeri symbolisena periferiana. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 820 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2001). 54 Quoted in Hannes Sihvo, “Karjalaisuus, Karjala ja muu Suomi. Oma ja muiden näkökulma karjalaiseen identiteettiin”, in Väinö Jääskeläinen and Ilkka Savijärvi eds, Tieten Tahtoen. Studia Carelia Humanistica 3 (Joensuu: University of Joensuu Faculty of Arts, 1994), p. 28; see also Castrén, Nordiska resor och forskningar, pp. 1–2. 55 Topelius “Ager fĳinska folket en historie?” p. 208. 348 pertti anttonen political children. In addition, he emphasised that the historical progression of the Finns provides them with a leading position in ‘their tribe’— that is, among all the peoples speaking languages related to Finnish.56 Indeed, when political childhood is projected onto people in the periphery, the people in the centre begin to look more advanced. The distanc- ing and temporal othering of Karelia into a periphery of modernity made Finland the possessor of such a periphery. Such a strategy in constructing modernity is by no means unique to Finland. During the last two centuries, many instances of international and intra-national colonialism have shown that the possession of a non-modern periphery, and the power over its definition, makes the possessor modern and developed—and competi- tive in the modern category of nations. In other words, oral tradition is put on display as an object of a modern gaze in order to make the subject of the gaze appear modern, and as such, the possessor of the symbolic and political value of the objectified tradition. Finland is a good example of a discursive arena in which such displays are part of a competition over power, since the construction of the Finnish periphery has taken place in direct relationship with competing attempts (for example, by Russian intellectuals)57 at defining Finland as such a periphery. At the same time as Karelia was regarded as a periphery to be possessed, it was embedded with meaning as a symbolic centre that pointed directly to the Finno-Ugric antiquity of the nation. Most of the poetic materials that Lönnrot collected for the Kalevala epic came from Karelia, which because of that came to be called the cradle of Finnish culture. Kar- elia, however, stood here as a historical reference, while Lönnrot erased it in his epic on the ethnographic level. When compiling his epic, Lönnrot did not only set out to make a publication but placed special emphasis on the unification of its language, so that it would not point to any particular location or region in the country. In other words, he intentionally manipulated his folklore sources in order to have their new textual context—as well as the epic narrative—refer to Finland and to Finns as a nation, not just to Karelia. In this enterprise, he used a number of textual methods and strategies. First, he wanted to make the epic comprehensible to all Finnish speakers, so that “the entire nation can read it”. This required the elimination of

56 Allan Tiitta, Harmaakiven maa. Zacharias Topelius ja Suomen maantiede. Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk 147 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica / Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1994), p. 65; see also Isaksson, Kumma kuvajainen, p. 203. 57 See Timo Vihavainen, “To whom does the Kalevala belong?” Books from Finland 1999 (2), p. 120. oral traditions and the making of the finnish nation 349 most of the dialectal and other linguistic differences. By doing so, Lönnrot, as pointed out by Lauri Honko, relocated the texts from “a rather narrow zone between Finland and Karelia”58 to Finland and Finnish literature. According to Honko, Lönnrot’s editing principles and his artistic goals made the poetic material homeless, because “it ceased being the product of a particular local culture”.59 It is certainly true that the songs had not been performed in any place in exactly the same format in which they were included in the Kalevala epic. However, instead of becoming homeless thanks to Lönnrot, they became national. They were rooted in the emerging idea of the Finnish nation-state. Instead of originating from particular locales, as the documented epic sources did, the Kalevala epic was made to originate from “Finland”, meaning at the same time any place and all places in the nationally conceptualised geographical and cultural unit. Although Lönnrot relocated the textual universe of folk poetry from local cultures into national culture and thus put the folk poetry into a new context, he believed that he had actually brought it back to its original cultural and political context. Lönnrot justified his textual practices with the notion that the folk poems that he used as his sources had their origin in the culture and heritage of the forefathers of all Finns. The songs had, in other words, originally belonged to “all Finns” regardless of dialectal or “tribal” differences, and now Lönnrot, by changing the dialectical texts into a standard poetic vernacular, “returned” them to the original ethnic and national entity. The end result of his textual compilation symbolised this ethnic entity and its allegedly intrinsic unity. This is indeed one of the most essential reasons why his epic compilation became a national symbol. The fact that many of the songs contained in the national epic came from across the Russian border plays a minor role in relation to the following three important conceptions. First, the culture of the Karelian populations across the border was seen to originate from the Finnish side of that border. Second, their culture was regarded as representing an antique layer of Finnish culture. Three, selected elements from this oral culture were now serving as symbolic representations of Finnish national culture.

58 Lauri Honko, “The Kalevala: The Processual View”, p. 183. 59 Honko, op. cit., p. 211. 350 pertti anttonen

Conclusion According to the conventional view in Finnish folklore studies, nineteenth- century Finnish nation making followed Herder’s ideas of nationalism and especially the notion that national cultures are manifested in the oral traditions of the lower classes, the ‘folk’. Such traditions have been regarded as conveying the history of the nation and speaking for its innate unity. They have thus provided the basis for constructing a historical narrative in which the nation is built upon the culture of the ‘folk’. I hope to have shown here that the story of Finland, and the story from folk culture to national culture in Finland, is more complex than what the conventional narrative conveys. The making of the Finnish nation meant the constitution of a cultural and geopolitical entity which would, first, politically integrate two language groups, the Swedish speakers and the Finnish speakers, and second, create ethnic solidarity across class boundaries within the two linguistic groups. The social value of the representations of oral traditions was not in their mere reference to history or ancestry, to the ‘presence’ of the past. Even more important was the emerging notion that constructions of history and heritage could prove that Finnish speakers, too, can contribute to ‘national life’ and modern civilisation. The Karelian folk poetry contained in the national epic did not only come to symbolise nationally significant historical traits and layers. It also came to denote a historical movement for the Finnish people from Finno-Ugric antiquity to Western modernity. The songs were valuable documents from older layers of history, but their main political value rested on the idea that they served to prove that the Finnish people as a national entity had not stayed in that history but made progress and became modern possessors of that history. The Kalevala epic is certainly traditional in the sense of drawing on old oral tradition, but it is also a modern epic, since its major function in the society in which it was published was to contribute to the production of national modernity on the basis of its traditionality. For this reason we can say that oral tradition or ‘folk culture’ has not constituted a foundation on which the emergent nation-state has rested. Rather, the construction of the national has constituted a foundation on which the study and appropriation of oral traditions have rested. The very act of doing ethnography, collecting oral traditions as representations of bygone history, has proved the relative modernity of the Finns. In this process, oral traditions as representations of folk culture became modern possessions. Sorrowful Folksong and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Finland

Vesa Kurkela

White Blues from Finland In his recent book, Voicing the Popular, Richard Middleton comprehensively highlights the folklorisation1 of American black music, especially ‘the blues’ and its revival, in the twentieth century. Middleton’s interpretations provide fresh ideas for the study of folksong and society. Somewhat surprisingly, I have found interesting similarities between the ‘blues’ discourse and the writings on Finnish folksong in the nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth century, blues was essentially a complex and contradictory phenomenon with a general image fluctuating between authentic folklore and commercial exploitation. The commercial side was often more visible, since blues was a highly influential genre in the development of American popular music. However, it was not infre- quently argued by the black music devotees that original blues songs also expressed something very profound in the experience of the African American population. “Sorrow songs” were “the folk heritage of the race”, as the writer and political leader W.E.B. Du Bois put it in his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903). From decade to decade, the myth of sorrowful blues songs was repeated and strengthened by various scholars and black music artists. Consequently, the myth that the music was an extension of “the suffering nobility of an ill-used, backward but resilient folk” became one of the common stereotypes.2

1 Unfortunately Middleton does not define the term ‘folklorisation’ at all. This seems to be typical of all folk and popular music research: the term is widely used but seldom defined. However, here ‘folklorisation’ is understood as political, artistic and commercial use of folklore. The term could also defined, as Diane Thram (2002, p. 132) puts it, as “a gradual process of transition in which the song and dance is commodified”. See Vesa Kurkela, Folklorismi ja järjestökulttuuri [Music-Folklorism and Organisation Culture—The ideological and artistic utilisation of folk music in Finnish youth organisations] (Helsinki: Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology, 1989); Diane Thram, “Therapeutic Efficacy of Music- Making: Neglegted Aspect of Human Experience Integral to Performance Process” in Year- book for Traditional Music 34 (2002), pp. 129–138. 2 Richard Middleton, Voicing the Popular. On the Subjects of Popular Music (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 38–40. 352 vesa kurkela

This chapter mainly discusses the political utilisation of printed folksong in nineteenth-century Finland. Similarly to the blues discourse, the concepts of sorrow songs and the suffering nobility of humble folk can also be found in Finland, during the period of the nationalist awakening and the folk revival associated with it. Of course, the political and historical context in Finland differed in many ways to twentieth-century Ameri- can popular culture. In the history of black music, the issue of colour was always tacitly present; however, the same could not be said about Finn- ish folk music, and even if ethnic divisions were subliminally evoked, the distinction was more closely related to language—for example, Finnish as opposed to Swedish—than to openly racial distinctions. However, Middleton outlines two other aspects of folklorisation that were also central to the Finnish development of folk music: class difference and aesthetic classification, that is whether music was seen as authentic folk music or as part of commercial entertainment. From the early stages of Finnish nationalism, folksong revival was based on the encounter of separate social classes and cultures, the elite and the peasants. Understanding the division into two classes and their subsequent interaction is essential when explaining the symbolic and artistic use of folk music in the construction of the Finnish nation-state. Furthermore, the artistic and political utilisation of Finnish folksong followed two quite separate lines that resemble Middleton’s description of the reception of black music: on the one hand, beautiful sad folksongs were admired and even worshipped, and on the other hand, folk tunes were used for various purposes in local popular music production. The following will show how the concept of the sorrowful Finnish song was born and how it was positioned in the nineteenth-century nationalist movement.

The Finnish Political Background Finland was not considered to be a political entity until 1809, after the eastern provinces of the Kingdom of Sweden were annexed to Imperial Russia as a semi-autonomous grand duchy. Finland was allowed to keep its old Swedish constitution and a local parliament, or Diet, was founded consisting of four estates: the aristocracy, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, and the peasantry. However, the Diet of Estates had very little power; it was practically non-existent between 1809 and 1863 and not a single meeting was held during this time. Instead, the political power was in the hands of the Russian Tsar and his representative, the Governor Gen- eral. Furthermore, imperial decrees were published and executed by the sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 353 local bureaucratic government, the Senate, which consisted of members of the nobility nominated by the Tsar. The strong bond with Russia was guaranteed by the imperial army, reinforced by some domestic troops who were permanently settled in the country, and by the personal union whereby the Russian Tsar was automatically given the title of Grand Duke of Finland.3 The new political order led to a fairly complex situation regarding the languages spoken and written in Finland. Firstly, at the top of the social tree were the Governor General and his staff, speaking French and Rus- sian, along with the Russian-speaking imperial army. Secondly, there was the local administration, industry and trade, academia and high culture with its Swedish speaking upper-class and their servants. Thirdly, a prominent proportion of tradespeople in the Finnish towns spoke German and Russian, as was the case throughout the towns on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea. And finally, there were the lower-classes—peasants, agricultural labourers and some industrial workers—who formed about ninety percent of the population and practically only spoke Finnish.4

Herder and National Language As in many other Central and Eastern European countries, the influence of the Baltic-German writer Johann Gottfried von Herder on the academic elite was strong and long-lasting in Finland. Due to geographical proxim- ity, Herderian ideas became familiar quite early in Finland (around the mid-1790s).5 The position of Herder in academic discourse also stayed firm until the middle of the nineteenth century. For instance, in the 1840s and 1850s, Herderian ideas of the development of national languages were often reflected in the writings of Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884), a man who collected and composed the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.6 Actually, German Neohumanism and Herder’s language theory were a

3 For Finland’s political development in the nineteenth century, see for example Osmo Jussila, “Finland as a Grand Duchy 1809–1917”, in From Grand Duchy to a Modern State. A Political History of Finland since 1808, David & Eva-Kaisa Arter, trans., (London: Hurst & Company, 1999), pp. 10–60. 4 Kaarlo Wirilander, Herrasväkeä. Suomen säätyläistö 1721–1870 (Helsinki: Suomen historiallinen seura, 1974), pp. 128, 356–370. 5 H.K. Riikonen, “Porthan and Franzén on J.G. Herder at the Turn fo the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, in Sakari Ollitervo and Kari Immonen, eds, Herder, Suomi, Eurooppa (Helsinki: SKS, 2006), pp. 543–544. 6 Pertti Karkama, Kansakunnan asialla. Elias Lönnrot ja ajan aatteet (Helsinki: Suomal- aisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2001), pp. 15–19; 156–171. 354 vesa kurkela decisive background factor when the local intelligentsia started to define the content and limits of national culture. A few academic writers at the university of Turku and later in Helsinki7 founded a national cultural programme with an emphasis on the ancient history, folklore and language of the Finns.8 Finally in the 1840s, the increasing interest in founding of a Finnish nation led to the political programme called Fennomanism. The main idea was to develop the Finnish language into a literary language with the aid of Finnish newspapers, belles-lettres, non-fiction, and academic writing. Of course, this aim called for a wide programme of popular education; so wide, in fact, that the second part of the nineteenth century has with good reason been called the age of the people’s enlightenment. Written Finnish began to be established around the middle of the nineteenth century, but the process of change took almost a half century. By and by, the Fennoman programme also led to a situation in which a greater part of the Swedish-speaking upper classes became bilingual and often changed their home language to Finnish, and eventually many of them even Finni- cised their family names. However, the process was not easy. Originally, the national awakening was based on two languages, both Swedish and Finnish. Before the end of the nineteenth century, the most influential national and patriotic literature included lyric and epic poetry by Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877), historical novels by Zachrs Topelius the younger (1818–1898), and philosophical and political writing by Johan Vilhelm Snellman (1806–1881). The main works of these national heroes were published before or by the middle of the nineteenth century.9 They all wrote in Swedish and could hardly speak Finnish fluently. Gradually their texts were translated into Finnish and became an important part of Finnish nationalist literature. This process, however, took several decades. On the other hand, the most important national symbol was the Kal- evala, the epic written in Finnish. First published in 1835, it was a compilation made by Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884) and was composed of tens of thousands of lines of Finnish folklore, songs in the Kalevala metre that were collected in eastern Finland and Karelia. Long before this, nationalist-minded Swedish-speaking students were in the habit of singing Kal-

7 The university was moved to Helsinki the new capital of Finland in 1828. 8 William Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1974), pp. 19–37. 9 Jussila, “Finland as a Grand Duchy”, pp. 39–40. sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 355 evala songs in public. Students knew the basic melody of the ancient runo songs, but likely had no idea of the meaning of the lyrics. This situation persisted for several decades. As early as 1841, Kalevala was translated into Swedish by the famous Finno-Ugric linguist Matthias Alexander Castrén; it was also translated into French in 1845 and Russian in 1847, so many folklore enthusiasts in foreign countries became familiar with Kalevala’s narratives.10 However, the strongest supporters of runo songs and other Finnish folksongs could be found in academic, upper-class circles. Practically all of them were Swedish-speaking and they could only partly understand the message of the songs. The archaic language of the national epic was not even easy for those among the intelligentsia who were linguists, or those who, due to their lower-class family background, knew Finnish better than the average member of the gentry. As a result, the cultural meaning of the Kalevala stayed highly symbolic. The national epic stressed the value of Finnish culture and language among other civilised cultures in Europe. Furthermore, the Kalevala was a strong argument for the Fenno- man politicians in their call to upgrade the status of the Finnish language in Finnish society. After the Kalevala came out in print, it almost automatically became literary. From that moment on, it was a highly celebrated national piece of literature, written and recited, rather than orally transmitted and sung. The development of newer folksong, rhymed verses sung in Finnish, was quite similar.

Printed Language—Printed Music When analysing folksong published in Finland, Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘print language’ is a useful starting point. According to Anderson, printed text was a strong background factor for the development of the nation-state. The creation of a national language was a basic feature in numerous countries around the world and especially in the new Euro- pean nation-states that became independent in the period between the French Revolution and the end of the First World War.11 With the aid of dictionaries in native languages and printed text in newspapers, school books and belles-lettres, the national language was standardised. As a

10 Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism, p. 43. 11 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006 [first edition 1983]), Chapter 5. 356 vesa kurkela result, written texts gradually became central to public life, and the use of local dialects—typical of spoken languages—decreased in public and official communications. Folksong publishing in the nineteenth century had many similar traits comparable with the founding of print language. In Finland, even the very same patriotic printers that helped to construct a new national language promoted the folksong revival. Songs were printed and published in the songbooks targeted at various types of users: university students, school children, drawing-room musicians, and members of nationalist societies. Almost simultaneously, folksongs were elevated into the national song repertoire. In 1840, some Finnish folksong melodies were published in the appendix to Elias Lönnrot’s Kanteletar, the anthology of lyrical folk poems, mostly in Kalevala metre. The melodies were examples of “newer folksongs”, as Lönnrot put it. Unlike Kalevala runo songs, new songs were rhymed and structured in verses. According to Lönnrot, the new songs were very popular among the common people, whereas the old-style Kalevala singing was already nearly extinct.12 In the following years, new songs were collected by some folklore aficionados whose field trips were financed by the Finn- ish Literature Society. Many of them were then arranged and published in five folksong anthologies, printed in 1849 and 1854–55.13 The song publications were mainly intended for upper-class use. Fol- lowing the drawing-room music convention, they were normally arranged for solo song and piano. Many arrangements were also for part-singing in the then popular male quartets and small choirs. The result of arranging and publishing folksongs was similar to what had had happened earlier to old runo songs after the publishing of the Kalevala. Accordingly, orally transmitted folksongs with a lot of variation in their melodic and textual shape were frozen in one format. Folksong became printed song, and quite soon it had the same highly celebrated role as a nationalist medium as written Finnish.

12 Elias Lönnrot, Kanteletar taikka Suomen Kansan Wanhoja Lauluja ja Virsiä (Helsinki: G. Simelius, 1840), pp. x–xx. 13 August Reinholm ed., Suomen kansan laulantoja, Pianolla soitettavia (Helsinki: SKS, 1849); Karl Collan ed., Valituita suomalaisia kansanlauluja, Vol. 1 (Helsinki: Öhman, 1854); Wilhelm Poppius ed., Valituita suomalaisia kansanlauluja, Vol. 2 (Helsinki: Öhman, 1855); Karl Collan ed., Valituita suomalaisia kansanlauluja, Vol. 3 (Helsinki: Tikkanen, 1855); Filip von Schantz ed., Valituita suomalaisia kansanlauluja, Vol. 4 (Helsinki: Tikkanen, 1855). sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 357

The Publishers In 1831, the Finnish Literature Society (SKS) was founded in the wake of the first national awakening among the intelligentsia. In the following decades, the Society aimed to promote Finnish literature and cultural heritage in several ways. Finnish folklore in all its forms was seen as a central part of national heritage, and the Society continuously invested in various collecting activities. During the last three decades of the century, a systematically organised folklore collection resulted in hundreds of thousands of song verses, folk poetry and other kinds of spoken folklore being archived by the Society.14 Today the SKS is a well-known publishing house with a good financial standing, but this was not the case in its early years. In order to promote the publishing of Finnish literature and folklore, the Society cooperated with small local printing houses and publishing companies. Subscriptions or other special deals were made with the printers in order to get the books printed and distributed.15 Accordingly, the early folksong collections were usually not published by the Society itself but by its close col- laborators. By the mid nineteenth century, music publishing in Finland was still only in its infancy. There was only one music publishing company in the country, owned by a German musician, Ludwig Beuermann (1815–1868). Beuermann’s firm was a small music shop in Helsinki that mainly concentrated on supplying foreign sheet music and learning material for an upper-class clientele. In addition, Beuermann published continental dance music and solo songs by the first generation of Finnish composers. However, Beuermann was not interested in publishing folksong arrangements. Music was a business for him, and he did not have any special commitment to promote national music. As a result, publishing printed folksongs became a by-product for the local book publishers and printers who wanted to promote all kinds of patriotic literature. For them, songs were primarily lyrics, and not so much music. After being published, folksongs became a part of the print language and thus a part of a national literature, although musically decorated.

14 Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism, pp. 48–49. 15 Stig-Björn Nyberg, “Den Öhmanska bokhandeln 1839–1849. En studie i bokhandels- och förlagsförhållandena i Finland under 1840-talet”, Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 57, ed. Torsten Steinby (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1982), p. 109. 358 vesa kurkela

In addition, local musicians themselves published many songs and arrangements, since publishing companies were not eager to invest in separate music scores. For the time being, the size of the audience for notated music was very small. Only songbooks and leaflets with a more long term use could be profitable enough for music publishing. The cus- tomers preferred song collections, since the price for a song was lower than when printed separately. Accordingly, the most typical means of dissemination for national songs were through ‘song albums’, where the most popular songs were selected and arranged in a single book. These songbooks tended to dominate the music market, where the very same popular and national songs were republished in several versions at different times. From the publisher’s viewpoint, inserting the same popular and well-known songs in all their song publications was a guarantee for successful sales.

Canonising the Sorrowful However, printing the songs was not enough for establishing national folksong. Before printed folksong could become a symbol of Finnish nationalism, a selection had to made from the continuously increasing collections of folksongs which now contained several hundred melodies and lyrics. The main criterium of the songbook editors was aesthetic: the selected songs had to follow the common vision of authentic and beautiful Finnish song. In this process of canonising the ideal Finnish folksong, the stereotype of the so-called sad and sorrowful song was born. From the very beginning, sadness was related to the minor mode and, gradually, all ‘genuine’ Finnish folksong melodies tended to be written in minor keys. The enchantment of sorrowful song was written in the first poem of Lönnrot’s Kanteletar: “Soitto on suruista tehty, murehista muovaeltu”, literally “Playing is made of sorrows, formed from sadness”.16 However, in this sentence Lönnrot referred to playing the kantele, a wooden zither instrument, and not to singing. In fact, the kantele melodies and Kalevala singing could be found equally in minor and major keys, and sorrowful texts and minor mode had no clear relationship to each other. Thus, the concept of sorrowful song was unclear from the very beginning. Lönnrot did not refer to minor keys at all and not even to rhymed songs, when he spoke about sorrow and music: he was only referring to

16 Lönnrot Kanteletar taikka Suomen, p. 65. sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 359 the kantele. Still, upper-class audiences eagerly adopted the concept, and the idea of sad folksong was repeated in newspaper articles and music literature from one decade to the next. The following excerpt from Mor- gonbladet, a Swedish newspaper in Helsinki, represents a typical accolade of the time celebrating ‘authentic’ Finnish folksongs: Old folksongs mean for the Finns great riches. They have a lyric character which is highly peculiar, deep, and sentimental or gloomy.17 In the 1850s, the idea of folksong in the minor was so strong and generally accepted that some music critics were worried about the quality of music created by young local composers. In his review of the series of solo songs by Karl Collan, a writer with the pseudonym W. B-n was very pleased with the composer’s habit of using exclusively major modes in his songs. According to the critic, imitating folksongs and so using the minor mode would make new Finnish music too restricted, boring and dull: Minor modes on which most folksongs are based are often preferred by composers who have difficulties in successfully using major modes without becoming trivial or pure imitators . . . Although folksong is inclined to minor modes, our song also has a desire for brightness and pleasure . . . If our music has a future, then our composers must cultivate major modes and make us familiar with them.18 However, sorrowful song in the minor, and often rendered in slow tempo, was to be a permanent feature for all ‘authentic’ Finnish folksongs. This popular idea was likely based on two different reasons. Firstly, many new folk-song melodies in the minor were quite similar to the continental romance melodies then popular among the gentry (See Figure 1). New national songs were rated according to their aesthetic quality; they had to follow the standards of beautiful melodies in music popular among the upper classes. Secondly, the concept of sorrowful song consolidated the romantic picture of Finnish folk frequently reiterated in the local press and paternalist literature.19 According to this popular image, the Finnish populace was poor but humble, suffering but resigned: folk life was seen as harmonious and stable, and there were no angry rebels or revolutionary tendencies in this picture. This attitude was strengthened by the religious

17 Morgonbladet, (18 August, 1850). 18 W. B-n, “Inhemska musikalster. Kompositioner af Moring; sånger af Schantz och Collan”, Helsingfors Dagblad (18 December, 1862). 19 Zachris Topelius’ historical novels and Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s paternalistic poems were central in this image building. 360 vesa kurkela

(Valituita suomalaisia kansanlauluja 1, ed. Karl Collan 1854) Figure 1. Sorrow folksong in romance style: Tuoll’ on mun kultani (My love is there). sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 361 literature that was widely circulated and used among the Finnish speaking lower classes. The same idea was even expressed in the Bible: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.20 During this canonisation process, a small number of appropriate songs were selected from a wider corpus of collected folklore. The selection was made by the songbook editors that favoured the same old and previously published national songs. The very same songs were then repeated and rearranged in various songbooks and other printed formats.21 The number of these idealised songs can be quite easily counted by comparing songbooks from various decades: In my own estimation, the number was at first about ten to fifteen, and it hardly ever exceeded twenty. Table 1 contains 17 sorrowful folksongs from the songbooks and printed collections for amateur choirs frequently published in Finland before 1900. It shows that the most popular folksongs in nationalist usage had often appeared in the earliest printed songbooks: many had been published before the 1850s, while some very significant ones had appeared in Lönnrot’s Kanteletar in 1840. To measure their popularity, several criteria have been used. Firstly, the songs in the list had to be published before 1900 in at least three song books or collections for different purposes and musical groups: drawing room music (mostly solo song and piano), choirs or school songs. Secondly, these songs were selected and used for ‘Finn- ish folksong’ medleys for brass bands that were very popular during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the songs in the list had to belong to the active repertoire of the students’ choir Akademiska sångförening from the Uni- versity of Helsinki, or they had to have been rendered in one of the big national song festivals that were organised between 1881and 1900 by the Kansanvalistusseura [Society for Popular Education, literally the People’s Enlightenment Society]. The majority of the songs belonged to both of these repertoires. The table also shows that the majority of the songs were in the minor mode. Those few songs in major keys fitted well with the sad folksong repertoire, mainly because their lyrics stressed longing, loss and sorrow. The great majority of folksongs in minor mode seemed to justify the belief, as common then as nowadays, that authentic Finnish folk melody is always

20 The Bible, Psalm 111:10. 21 Pekka Jalkanen, “1800-luku: Huvitteleva porvari”, in Pekka Jalkanen and Vesa Kurkela, Suomen musiikin historia. Populaarimusiikki (Helsinki: WSOY, 2003) pp. 84–85. 362 vesa kurkela

Table 1. Sorrowful folksongs in printed music in Finland before 1900. Name First published Melodic type Aamulla varhain # 1882 pentachord in minor En voi sua unhoittaa pois # 1867 romance in major Läksin minä kesäyönä * # 1840 K pentachord in minor Kesäillalla * # 1886 romance in major Kreivin sylissä istunut * 1840 K romance in major Kultaansa sureva * # 1854 V1 romance in minor Kultani kukkuu kaukana * 1840 K pentachord in minor Kultaselle (Täällä pohjan tähden alla) * 1840 K pentachord in minor Lapsuuden toverille * # 1881 romance in major Minun kultani kaunis on * # 1849 R romance in minor Rannalla istuja (Hyljätyn valitus) * # 1855 V3 romance in minor Taivas on sininen * # 1855 V2 romance in minor Tuoll’ on mun kultani * # 1854 V1 romance in minor Velisurmaaja * 1840 K pentachord in minor Voi äiti parka * 1855 V4 romance in minor Voi minua poika raukkaa * 1855 V4 romance in minor Yksi ruusu on kasvanut * # 1886 romance in minor * sung by the student choirs 1858–1893 # sung in the national song festivals 1881–1900 K Kanteletar appendix 1840 r reinholm’s collection 1849 V Valituita collection 1–4 1854–55 in the minor mode. By their melodic contour, one third of these songs were based on a “Kalevalaic” pentachord (do-re-mi-fa-sol), but the lower dominant (sol below the tonic) also often played a prominent role in the unfolding of the melody. So the musical world of Kalevala songs held its position even in newer folksongs. (See Figure 2).

Artistic Value and Revitalisation There were at least two reasons for the huge number of rearrangements and new editions of the same folksongs. Firstly, folksong devotees and professional musicians generally thought that printed folksong automatically absorbed additional artistic value. Only after having a fixed shape in the publishing process could folksong be elevated to the level of musical art. This level was then guaranteed by making skilful arrangements for different vocal and instrumental assemblies. Simultaneously, an important musical-cultural practice was developed that was followed by most of the sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 363

(Valituita suomalaisia kansanlauluja 1, ed. Karl Collan 1854) Figure 2. Sorrow folksong, pentachord type: Kultani kukkuu kaukana (My darling calls far away). 364 vesa kurkela

Finnish composers for the next hundred years: Collecting folksongs from their home district and arranging and publishing them in printed form, was an essential part of every composer’s career; many composers felt this as a national duty.22 Of course, a similar tendency to artistic utilisation of folk music was found almost everywhere, at least in the Western world. It was a real zeitgeist that dominated the whole nineteenth century and lasted until the first decades of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the practise of collecting folksongs contained the idea of bringing the national heritage back to common people, a typical feature within many folk revival movements. As the folksong revival in Finland was closely connected to popular education, it also aimed at improving the use of songs among the people. The process occurred mainly in three, partly overlapping, phases. Firstly, from the late 1850s onwards, the quartets, usually triple-quartets (‘twelves’) of university students from Helsinki made several concert tours to almost all the towns and industrial centres in Finland. Swedish-speaking students sang these songs in Finnish and sorrowful folksongs had a prominent place in concert programmes, alongside romance songs, humorous Liedertafel songs and national hymns that were rendered in Swedish or German. Secondly, from the 1860s onwards, the elementary school system was reorganised. As part of the reorgani- sation, more secular songs were added to the curriculum and folksongs were found to be very useful in this regard. The same songs stayed in the school books for at least a century, and even the baby-boomer generation knows many of these sorrowful folksongs quite well. Thirdly, from the 1870s onwards, the movement of popular education, which operated through various voluntary societies and associations, founded many choirs, mostly mixed. During the next decade of the Kansanvalistusseura, the national society for popular education started to organise song and music festivals and published a lot of sheet music for the participants. During the 1890s big national festivals were held almost every year, and many local organisations—temperance societies, youth clubs and workers’ associations—had their own smaller festivals. Due to the printing activities, the same national songs spread to the repertoires of hundreds of amateur choirs and brass bands. The bands normally played sorrowful

22 This argument can be easily verified by browsing the two-volume edition of Suomen säveltäjiä [Finnish composers], ed. Einari Marvia (Helsinki: Otava 1965–66). Almost every composer has been said to have collected folksongs or at least made folksong arrangements or utilised folk music as source material for composing. sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 365 songs in long medleys, where sad minor melodies were interspersed with some cheerful and lively dance tunes.

Folksong as Political Music Sorrowful folksongs were indisputably political in context from the moment the first song books and albums were printed. However, during the next 30 years, their political meaning and function changed considerably. Following Philip Bohlman’s conceptions, folk music began as national music in the mid nineteenth century, and gradually became nationalist music typical of popular mass movements in many European countries at the turn of the twentieth century.23 Before the 1860s, sorrowful folksong was quite a neutral symbol of Finn- ishness and the Finnish nation. Patriotic upper classes and university students were mainly Swedish-speaking. Swedish was the mother tongue of those Fennoman activists who advocated the Finnish language becoming the national language together with or instead of Swedish. For all of them, Finnish folksong was still considered to be a typical exotic ‘other’, without any direct relation to their own way of living. In the beginning, the class encounter between the elite and lower classes was mainly literary and idealistic. The contact was seldom based on the knowledge of people’s real lives. During the 1860s the situation changed. The political life in the country was more heated. The main reason was the so-called language conflict, which divided Finnish society in two. On one side, the Fennomans sought to promote and elevate the status of the Finnish language, while on the other side, the Svekomans (or liberals) sought to retain the dominant status of the Swedish language in Finnish public life. Nationalist hymns and folksongs sung in Finnish now became a part of Fennoman policy. In 1876, the language controversy led to a real crisis in the students’ choir at the University of Helsinki. By this decade, the choir, “Akademiska Sångförening”, already had a considerable number of Finnish speaking members. These proponents of the Finnish party made a protest, since the majority of songs in the choir’s repertoire were in Swed- ish—only a few sorrowful Finnish songs were sung as a symbol of Finnish- ness. The choirmaster, Martin Wegelius—the founder of the Helsingfors musikinstitut, the predecessor of the Sibelius Academy—flatly rejected

23 Philip Bohlman, The Music of European Nationalism. Cultural Identity and Modern History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2004), pp. 81–99, 117–122. 366 vesa kurkela this criticism. As a result, the choir was temporarily disbanded, and the Finnish speakers founded their own choir with no Swedish songs in its repertoire.24 In the same decade, the proponents of the Swedish party started to collect Swedish folklore and songs among the Swedish-speaking peasants in the coastal regions of the northern Baltic Sea. During the next few decades they made arrangements, and printed and published them in their own songbooks and albums. In other words, they made Swedish folksongs collected in Finland a symbol of the Swedish-speaking minority and its culture in Finland. In addition, Swedish-speaking choirs performed folksongs from Sweden and Carl Michael Bellman’s evergreen romances, as well as cheerful songs from the eighteenth-century German male quar- tet repertoire.25 By the turn of the twentieth century, Finnish sorrowful folksong was the vehicle and the symbol of cultural distinction. With the aid of these songs it was easy to stress the qualities and special features of Finnishness compared to the more cheerful and lively Swedish folksongs that were usually in the major. The national myth of the doleful and melancholic quality of Finnish music has survived until the present day. During the last fifty years, however, the sadness has usually related to Finnish schlager, popular music and hit tunes of domestic recordings. It is easy to argue that Finnish hits are more often in the minor and more melancholic and full of lamentation than Swedish pop hits by Abba and other popular artists, for example. Maybe the old tradition of sorrowful folksong underlies Finnish pop tunes and even domestic rock music. However, it is also indisputable that these songs have another important background: Russian romance and other popular tunes from Eastern Europe.26

Conclusion: Nationalist Popular Song Along with printed folksongs, the national awakening in Finland also gave birth to other songs that were highly nationalistic and even more

24 Riitta Aalto-Koistinen, Suomalaiset ylioppilaskuorot 1800-luvulla. Katsaus ylioppilas- kuorotoiminnan aatevirtauksiin (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston musiikkitieteen laitoksen julkaisuja 3, 1984), pp. 58–59. 25 Niklas Nyqvist, Från bondson till folkmusikikon. Otto Andersson och formandet av ”fin- landsvensk folkmusik” (Åbo: Åbo Akademis förlag, 2007), pp. 27–48. 26 In the recent years the Russian influence on Finnish popular music has been studied quite comprehensively. However, the topic is beyond the scope of this study. See for example Pekka Jalkanen, “1800-luku: Huvitteleva porvari” pp. 83–111. sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 367 celebrated and more often used than traditional folksongs. The central nationalist song repertoire was quite heterogenic in its content. It consisted of several marches, hymns, anthems, romances and dance music melodies with patriotic and uplifting song texts. There was also a religious hymn in the group, Jumala ompi linnamme, originally composed in Ger- man by Martin Luther in 1528. However, a great many of these songs were composed by the first generation of local composers. Some of them had studied in Germany, at the Conservatory of Leipzig, but many were amateur musicians without formal academic music training. The most well known patriotic song texts were written by J.L. Runeberg and Z. Topelius the younger. As stated earlier, these writers wrote almost exclusively in Swedish. The only important exceptions were Jaakko Juteini (1781–1855) and August Ahlqvist (1826–1889, using the artistic name A. Oksanen). These bilingual writers preferred to use Finnish in their works and created a lot of paternalistic and uplifting poems. Some of these were also adapted to the nationalist song canon, including Arvon mekin ansaitsemme, Älä itke äitini, Savolaisen laulu, Suomen kielen laulu. Among these hymns and marches a similar kind of selection process occurred as had happened with printed folksongs. Quite a small group of nationalist songs were filtered in this process, and this core repertoire was sung at almost every patriotic gathering, educational assembly and song festival. At the end of the nineteenth century, the canonised repertoire of Finnish nationalist hymns and marches contained all the following songs: Vårt land—Maamme (national athem, F. Pacius—Runeberg) Jumala ompi linnamme (Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, by Martin Luther) Savolaisen laulu (C. Collan—A. Oksanen) Björneborgarnes marsch—Porilaisten marssi (J. Kress—Runeberg) Vasa marsch—Vaasan marssi (C. Collan—Z. Topelius) Suomis sång—Suomen laulu (F. Pacius—E. von Quanten) Vid en källa—Lähteellä (F. Ehrnström—Runeberg) Kesäpäivä Kangasalla (G. Linsén—Z. Topelius) Honkaen keskellä (J. Ennola—Yrjö Koskinen) Arvon mekin ansaitsemme (trad.—J. Juteini) In contrast to sad folksongs, these songs were always in the major. Fur- thermore, their general message was more optimistic and activating. As can be seen in the song titles, most of them originally had Swedish lyrics, and some had also been published in Sweden with remarkable popularity. After being translated into Finnish—by the 1880s at the latest—they soon became accepted as part of the central song repertoire in the Fennoman national movement. 368 vesa kurkela

In this chapter, national hymns and marches have intentionally been juxtaposed with folksong arrangements. They undoubtedly belonged to the same repertoire that was highly nationalist and popular. One can even speak about nationalist popular songs that held their position even in the twentieth century after Finland became independent (1917) and these songs partly lost their function as a symbol of political struggle. However, the symbolic function of the songs was particularly important during the Second World War when the existence of the Finnish nation was threatened. Nationalist popular songs were based on quite a heterogeneous group of melodies, but they still shared many central features. These songs became so generally well-known that almost every Finn could sing along or at least was able to recognise such a song immediately. If someone had been even a short time at school, he or she would know the central nationalist songs, for they belonged to the curriculum at all stages of public education. Furthermore, nearly all of the canonised songs belonged to the repertoire of national festivities. For instance, the most central songs were sung nearly without exception in all of the biggest patriotic mass gatherings at the turn of the twentieth century and later on. The list of common traits could easily be continued. Every song in the canon had a strong symbolic value that stressed the aims of the nationalist movement. Although musically they varied in quality, the message of the song lyrics was normally the same. All the songs constructed quite a homogeneous image of the homeland, its beautiful nature, brave history and its poor and humble people. However, printed folksongs still kept some qualities that made them a special case in the nationalist song repertoire. These features appeared often in which these songs were rendered in public. Compared to hymns and marches, folksongs were seldom used for community singing in festivals. The reason can only be guessed, but maybe sad folksongs were generally seen as too personal and individual. Or possibly their melancholic character meant that these types of folksongs were not uplifting enough for singing in unison at mass gatherings. Only songs based on folksy march or dance tunes, like Honkaen keskellä and Arvon mekin ansaitsemme—in the major of course—were widely used as unison songs. Some sorrowful songs were also transformed into more suitable vehicles for unison singing due to new paternalist or religious lyrics written by Fennoman writers. For example, a ballad Kreivin sylissä istunut became highly popular with a new title Olet maamme armahin Suomenmaa (Thou art our Land, beloved sorrowful folksong & nationalism in 19th-c. finland 369

Finland) and a sorrowful romance Kultaselle is today much more well- known as Täällä Pohjantähden alla (Here beneath the North Star). In contrast, folksongs were almost always sung as multi-part arrangements for choirs and smaller song groups. In the nineteenth century, multi-voiced singing in four-part harmony was the most typical way of rendering songs on the stage, so the choice is easy to understand. How- ever, this general aesthetic principle only partly explains the habit of multi-part folk singing. In nineteenth-century Finnish public discourse— in newspaper articles and other writings on national music—folksong was generally seen as simple music with the most beautiful melodies and lyrics. It is likely that from the nationalist perspective the simple quality of folksong was too modest and folksy for the purpose of celebrating the nation and homeland in festivals and other public occasions. With skilful arrangements simple folksongs stepped into the sphere of fine art and became national symbols. In both song groups—in folksongs and uplifting hymns and marches— a strong concentration on a few songs can be found. These songs became real nationalist hits due to their continuous popularity, visibility and prevalence above all other national songs. These songs were the core of the nationalist song canon. These evergreens toughly held their position from one decade to the next. Each decade, a few new songs were adopted into the core repertoire while some songs were abandoned. Still, the most important and central songs have managed to retain their position. Even today, the songs are generally well-known and continue to symbolise nationalist sentiment.

Folklore beyond Nationalism: Identity Politics and Scientific Cultures in a New Discipline

David Hopkin

Does it seem frivolous to compare the foremost ideology of the modern world to a fairy tale?1

Folklore and the Invention of Tradition Folklore’s arrival on the European intellectual scene might be considered timely. If the word itself was not coined until 1846, the various collecting and theorising activities the neologism encompassed stretched back into the late eighteenth century, and so coincided with the revolutionary shock to established sources of political legitimacy. Patriot invocations of the sovereign people had already become part of the political culture of the pre-revolutionary enlightened public sphere, but by-and-large the shape and unity of the nation so invoked was not explored.2 The original French revolutionaries of 1789 did not stop to consider the geographical limits of the nation before they started remaking it: their new nation corresponded, more or less, to the old kingdom. Initially at least, the National Assembly experienced few of the difficulties that beset the revolutionary Frankfurt Parliament sixty years later in deciding for whom (and for where) it was legislating. However, in France, as earlier in the United States, the attempt to define the now sovereign nation through a new constitution revealed unexpected difficulties about establishing where the borders of the nation lay, and who could claim the rights of citizenship. What had once been assumed now had to be explicated. In response to provincial resistance to the revolutionary project, culture emerged as one marker of national belonging, so that persistence use of regional languages and customs was

1 Kenneth Minogue, Nationalism (London, Batsford, 1967), p. 8. 2 The emergence of patriot political culture both in France and elsewhere during the eighteenth century is the subject of a large literature, well encapsulated both by Anne- Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales (Paris: Seuil, 1999) and Tim Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660–1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 372 david hopkin sufficient to exclude one from the political nation (in Jacobin rhetoric if not actually in revolutionary practice).3 Subsequently the revolutionary, and later the imperial state became interested for the first time in documenting popular culture, for example through the work of the semi-official Académie Celtique, in the hope that continuities in culture could provide historical legitimacy for new or regenerated nations as first revolutionary and then Napoleonic armies tore up the ancien régime map of Europe.4 The French revolutionaries had discovered what Rousseau had predicted, that the social contract was not in itself sufficient to bind the members of the sovereign nation together, one also needed those “sentiments of sociability, without which it is impossible to be either a good citizen or a loyal subject”.5 While in the ideal world of The Social Contract these sentiments were to be nursed through a civil religion, when it came to putting his ideas into contemporary practice, in his attempts to write constitutions for Corsica and Poland, Rousseau emphasised the cultivation of national character and customs as the glue that united the citizens to each other and to their state, taking us very close to the subject of folklore.6 Folklore was not, in truth, a large part of the French revolutionary cultural project: the revolutionaries were quite prepared to seek unity through the culture that the people ought to have rather than the one they actually possessed, and their Napoleonic successors were likewise enthusiasts for cultural imperialism.7 However, the perceived failure of this project, including the fiasco of the Rousseauian civil religion dedicated to the supreme being, entailed caution on their descendants. Not just the Guizot circle described by Joep Leerssen above, but Restoration radicals such as George Sand and Edgar Quinet, were more willing to engage with popular culture as source of cultural unity.8 An inherited culture, widely shared, a common legacy of national myth, song and legend, was what, accord-

3 Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel, Une politique de la langue: la Révolution française et les patois (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). 4 Nicole Belmont, Aux sources de l’ethnologie française: L’académie celtique (Paris: Editions du CTHS, 1995). 5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (Ed. and trans. Maurice Cranston), (London: Penguin, 1968), p. 186. 6 Anne Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism, (New York: Basic Books, 1970). 7 Michael Broers, “Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Napoleonic Italy” Past and Present 120 (2001), pp. 152–180. 8 Charles Rearick, Beyond the Enlightenment: Historians and Folklore in Nineteenth- Century France (Bloomington ID: Indiana University Press, 1974), pp. 157–161; Nicole Belmont, “L’académie celtique et George Sand. Les débuts des recherches folkloriques en France”, Romanticisme 5:9 (1975), pp. 29–38. folklore beyond nationalism 373 ing to Michelet, made people into ‘the People’, converting the multitude into a collectivity, a single historical actor pursuing a progressive national destiny.9 Even revolutionaries and republicans no longer assumed that an act of voluntarist will was enough to create a sovereign people. In other words, one could argue that the development of folklore scholarship was not fortuitous but an ideological necessity in a post-revolutionary age. Even in those countries which had not gone anywhere near as far as the French in their experiments with democracy, the people now had to be courted as well as counted. Krisztina Lajosi’s exploration of the ‘the crowd’ on the operatic stage, is just one marker of the how ‘the People’ had emerged in political discourse. Whether or not actual people were consulted on their government, ‘the People’ mattered. One can portray this rediscovery of the culture of the people in a progressive light, as driven by concern for, and interest in, the political and social needs of the many. That is why, in this chapter, I have chosen to situate the development of folklore among the progenitors of ‘civic nationalism’— Rousseau, the Revolution and French Republicanism—rather than the better-known teleology of ‘ethnic nationalism’ that leads from Herder through the Grimms to ‘Blood and Soil’ and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.10 In practice I am not convinced that there is much to separate voluntarist and organicist elaborations of nationhood, but given assumptions that folklore is the intellectual property of the latter, I wanted to emphasise its ties to the former. Even in France, thanks in part to the Vichy regime’s appropriation of the subject,11 most scholars believe that folklore is the purlieu of the political right, indeed the far right, so it is worth mentioning the radical and democrat credentials of its pioneers in France such as the Breton Saint-Simonian Emile Souvestre or Courbet’s boyhood friend Max Buchon, both quarante-huitards.12 Louise Michel, the Red Virgin of the Commune, published a book of Kanak legends and songs, collected

9 Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution française, (Paris, 1847), Vol. 2, p. 528. On Michelet and folklore see Rearick, 82–103. 10 Christa Kamenetsky, “Folktale and Ideology in the Third Reich”, Journal of American Folklore 90 (1977), pp. 168–178: James Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (eds), The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich (Bloomington ID: Indiana University Press, 1994). 11 Christian Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy. Folklore et révolution nationale, 1940–1944 (Lyon: CNRS, 1989). 12 Bärbel Plötner-Le Lay and Nelly Blanchard (eds), Emile Souvestre (1806–1854): écrivain breton porté par l’utopie sociale (Brest: CRBC, 2007). Gerstle Mack, Gustave Courbet (New York: Da Capo, 1951), pp. 51–52. 374 david hopkin during her exile to New Caledonia.13 Populists may not have met the hard ideological test of doctrinaire Marxists, but they were not reactionaries. The problem with populists, those who seek their legitimacy from ‘the People’ whether as folklorists or as politicians, is their denial of class. As David Atkinson’s chapter in this volume demonstrates, folklore was supposed to be the possession of an undivided people. This was not only the view of Anglo-American ballad scholars considered by Atkinson, but a widely held perception. In Finland, rune-song collectors imagined that there was “once in the life of nations a time when all the elements in which they have subsequently specialised still comprised a single entity, when the individual did not yet stand apart from the people and this was not yet broken up into classes differing in their civilisation and their living conditions, but when the same spirit prevailed in everything and everything was held together by a natural affinity of souls.”14 Historians cannot be so cavalier with the concept of class: indeed folklorists’ rejection of the language of class is, for historians, suspicious, and potentially revelatory about their real motivations. The subject of folklore emerged alongside not only the political modernisation that flowed from the French Revolu- tion, but the economic modernisation that flowed from the industrial revolution and the concomitant emergence of class societies, and one might have expected folklorists to have taken more explicit notice of this. To deny the inequalities that were flagrant to any observer on the streets of Berlin, Helsinki, Christiana and Boston, seems an indication of bad faith. And so it is plausible that those who articulated concepts of cultural unity transcending social divisions were doing so for their own ends, to prevent the class mobilisation of masses. The chapters in this volume by Detmar Klein and Pertti Antonnen suggest that, both in Alsace and Finland, cultural and political activists were engaged in just such an endeavour. Transcending class might be achieved in two ways: firstly, as in Gell- ner’s famous Platonic ideal of developing nationalism in Ruritania, an emergent bourgeoisie, through their collections of folksongs, made common cause with both the peasantry and working class against the continued overlordship of Empire and a feudal aristocracy. Once the latter

13 Kathleen Hart, “Oral Culture and Anti-colonialism in Louise Michel’s Mémoires and Légendes et chants de gestes canaques (1885)”, Nineteenth-century French Studies 30 (2001), pp. 107–120. 14 Robert Tengström quoted in Lauri Honko, “Comparing Traditional Epics in the East- ern Baltic Sea Region”, in Lauri Honko (ed.), The Kalevala and the World’s Traditional Epics, (Helsinki: Studia Fennica Folkloristica 12, 2002), p. 330. folklore beyond nationalism 375 were defeated, this bourgeoisie would become the political elite of the new nation-state; they continued to appeal to that common cause for electoral purposes, still singing the same songs even, but in practice were no more sympathetic to the real interests of the labouring classes than their predecessors.15 Gellner had eastern European countries in mind but perhaps one can see something of the Ruritanian model in the Irish and Icelandic cases discussed in this volume by Clare O’Halloran and Terry Gunnell. Alternatively, traditional elites such as aristocrats and clerics, frightened that industrialisation would rob them of both their social and political position, invoked concepts of a timeless, agrarian folk, under the tutelage of ‘natural’ leaders. Folklore could be made to emphasise the ‘organic’, vertical connections that bound the social order, leaving room for hierarchies of property and power, and at the same time it could project the past as an ideal into the present. Thus folklore was an ideological weapon with which to fight another new collectivist mythology, that of class. By definition tradition could not be located in the new elements of society, the urban proletariat and bourgeoisie, it was treasured among the peasantry, who therefore had to be themselves treasured as receptacles of an authentic and rooted culture, opposed to the cosmopolitan cultural degeneracy of the city. This is the implicit in Prys Morgan’s chapter on Romantic Wales in that influential collection of essays, The Invention of Tradition;16 Lord Bute does not get a mention in Hugh Trevor-Roper’s chapter in the same volume on Scotland, but one wonders whether his interest in oral epics discussed by Joep Leerssen was motivated by such considerations. In short, the accusation, most violently articulated by the Breton peasant storyteller and beggar anarchist Jean-Marie Déguignet, is that folklorists mimicked the voice of the people but for reasons that were antithetical to the people’s real interests. And having mentioned some radical folklorists it is only fair to admit that one can also find among their number some ‘monarchisto-Jesuitico-clericoco’ regionalists of the kind denounced by Déguignet, such as the Breton aristocrat Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué.17 Villemarqué certainly expected the Breton nation, now culturally reinvigorated thanks to his collection of historical ballads,

15 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edition, 2006) pp. 57–61. 16 Prys Morgan, “From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period”, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 43–100. 17 Jean-Marie Déguignet, Mémoirs of a Breton Peasant, (trans. Linda Asher) (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), p. 400. 376 david hopkin the Barzaz-Breiz, to look to its ‘natural’ elites, the clergy and the nobility, for its political leadership.18 In either case, if they prove valid, folklorists can be accused of what Eric Hobsbawm termed ‘the invention of tradition’. In this volume we have met some cases that fit nicely into this category, such as Icelandic Twelfth Night celebrations or Mistral’s Fèsto Vierginenco. If folklorists did not actually concoct the material itself—and the questions of forgery that hover over some of the most important monuments of Romantic folklore, including Ossian, the Kalevala, the Grimms’ fairytales, the Barzaz-Breiz and even the Hasanaginica, can spill over to include the entire subject—then the values of tradition, authenticity and rootedness that they attached to it were spurious. Even if they were well-meaning, folklorists were, by definition, social tourists, unable to bridge the chasm of understanding that separated them from the peasants, fishermen, servants and itinerants they interrogated. They came looking for folk songs and tales precisely because these were not part of their culture but exotic to it: it was their ‘other’, to use a term that has been invoked frequently in this volume. Yet because they were outsiders to folk culture they could not understand what meaning its artefacts possessed to those who actually used them in their daily lives. A whole host of historians, taking their ideological cue from Gram- sci, have argued that folklore, far from voicing the unity of the people, was the pre-political expression of class antagonism.19 The allegation is that folklorists completely misunderstood what they were hearing: rather than offering them, as they so frequently assumed, access to an ante-historical epoch of social harmony, folk songs and tales were the contemporary expression of social conflict. Hence the historian Barry Reay, considering rural life in nineteenth-century England, pronounces himself “continually fascinated by the ability of nineteenth-century artists, writers and folksong collectors to remain so oblivious to the lives of those around them, even when they attempted to represent them.”20

18 Villemarqué has been the subject of much scholarly invective: for a clear-eyed sum- mation of this literature, see Mary-Ann Constantine, Breton Ballads (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 1996), pp. 10–16. 19 For example, Dave Harker, “May Cecil Sharp be Praised?”, History Workshop Journal 14 (1982), pp. 45–62. For a rejection of Marxist (and Gramscian) inspired folk-song scholarship in England, see Chris Bearman, “Who were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp’s Somerset Folk Singers”, Historical Journal 43:3 (2000), pp. 751–775. 20 Barry Reay, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2004) p. xii. folklore beyond nationalism 377

Strangely historians, who have had no interaction with these long dead folk (and who in class terms are seldom much closer to the peasant than the folklorist), nonetheless believe themselves in a better position to interpret the real meaning of this material and bridge that social (and now generational) chasm of understanding. But then historians do not deny the existence of the social question, even those among them that believe notions of class were as much a product of political culture as concepts of nationhood. Although history as an academic discipline owes much the same debt as folklore to romanticism’s rejection of Enlighten- ment universalism in favour of particularity and uniqueness, even those historians interested in the cultural life of the masses have generally been dismissive towards folklore’s intellectual achievements. Folklore’s assertion of unity between place, people and culture, which bound the past to the present and the future through inherited custom and language, is the denial of historians’ main concern which is change over time. Marxist historians rejected nineteenth-century folklorists because they failed to acknowledge social conflict, which Marxists understood to be the motor of history. The ‘cultural turn’ in history has promoted folklore back onto the historical agenda, but not as investigation into the cultural life of the masses, only as the elaboration of a discourse in which notions of ‘the folk’ were manipulated for political ends. Folklorists have become interesting for what they can tell us about the political culture of social elites, not for what they can tell us about ‘the People’, which has become merely an imagined category. For a historian to take folklorists’ ideas seriously is considered simultaneously laughable and sinister, the scholarly equivalent of Radovan Karadžić declaiming Serb ballads while directing the siege of Sarajevo. My aim in the rest of this chapter is to direct a small blow against this view, widespread in both the French- and English-speaking academies, and to champion the scholarship of nineteenth-century folklorists. In the process I will question some of the ways in which theorists and historians of nationalism have brought folklore into their arguments. Because, while some of the best known works of folklorists, such as the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen and the Kalevala are often invoked in their works, few historians are really that familiar either with folklorists or with folkloristics.21 Indeed, the best studies of folklore’s ideological connections to

21 A particularly disastrous example of what can happen when a historian of nationalism turns his attention to folklore is provided by Louis L. Snyder in his chapter on the 378 david hopkin nationalism have come from within folkloristics.22 And that is not unreasonable, historians of nineteenth-century nationalism have plenty of other material to study. It is true that many folklorists were politically active or connected with nationalist endeavours—an early collector of Italian folksongs, Costantino Nigra, was Cavour’s right-hand man23—but by and large they were not themselves the politicians who brought about the transformations to the nineteenth-century map of Europe. The folklorist Douglas Hyde became the first president of the Irish Republic, but one speaks of de Valera’s Ireland, not Hyde’s, and rightly so.24 However, because historians’ attention is largely elsewhere, it is reasonable to ask whether their sketchy portrayals of folklorists are accurate. I want to do this in two ways. Firstly, I will discuss the social and political background of folklorists, and the nature of their relationships to their informants. Do they fit either of the two models outlined above? I will take nineteenth-century French folklorists as my example here, though they seem not atypical of European folklorists more generally. Secondly, how did folklorists conceive of the material they collected? Did they remain wedded to romantic notions that bound together language, culture and ethnicity? Did they continue to deny any dynamism to the traditions they documented? If either of these propositions holds true, we might assume that folklorists’ ideological and political concerns fundamentally distorted the collecting process and that this necessarily invalidates the material they collected. But we should not assume at the outset that nationalism is both the ends and means of folklore. It is true that the first generation of romantic folklorists, such as Jacob Grimm, made no secret of their nationalist objectives, but to condemn the entire subject as tainted from birth as the offspring of romantic nationalism would fail to acknowledge how folklore developed over the course of the nineteenth century, from a branch of literature into a would-be science. In the process some

Grimms’ fairytales: Roots of German Nationalism (Bloomington ID: Indiana University Press, 1978). 22 See, among others, Richard Dorson, “The Question of Folklore in a New Nation”, Journal of the Folklore Institute 3 (1966), pp. 277–98; Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (New York: Pella, 1986), Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000); William Wilson, Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (Bloomington ID: Indi- ana University Press, 1976). 23 Pierfelice Borelli, Costantino Nigra. il diplomatico del Risorgimento (Cavallermag- giore: Gribaudo, 1992). 24 Which is not to deny Hyde’s importance: see Janet and Gareth Dunleavy, Douglas Hyde: A Maker of Modern Ireland, (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1992). folklore beyond nationalism 379 folklorists found themselves painfully torn between their scholarly principles and their political commitments.

The Social and Political Relations of French Folklorists In addition to Villemarqué, there were other French folklorists drawn from the traditional, rural elites: the landowning nobility or the Catholic clergy. The most significant collector of folk songs in francophone Lorraine, for example, was the comte de Puymaigre; his even more active counterpart in germanophone Lorraine was the priest Louis Pinck.25 In Brittany, a size- able number of clerics were involved in the collection and defence of the regional culture, of whom the most important was François Cadic, a social activist priest of the Rerum Novarum generation, who headed the parish of Breton Parisians from 1897 to 1929.26 In each case there is no doubt that their actions as folklorists were connected to their political allegiances, and were designed to shore up traditional, agrarian values and social alli- ances against the dangers posed by urbanisation, industrialisation and class politics. All were hostile to the revolutionary and republican state, and all were partisans of decentralisation which, whatever its other merits, would have preserved bastions of religious and social traditionalism in a sea of anticlerical and increasingly proletarian politics. However, these individuals’ interest in popular culture cannot be considered typical of their class. The fate of the comtesse de Cerny, a collector of folktales from the banks of the Rance, whose husband looked on her folkloric activities with aristocratic disdain and forbade her to write any more books, might be more representative of the old nobility’s attitude to the subject.27 The clergy, likewise, was more likely to consider folklore as so much ‘superstition’ and could be just as hostile as the centralising state towards what they considered pagan survivals. Cadic found his attempts at revivalism stymied by the Breton episcopacy. Certainly some folklorists were drawn from the ranks of the clergy but they in no way represent a general attitude within the Catholic Church. While the model appears to hold good for certain individuals, their interest in folklore cannot be

25 David Hopkin, “Identity in a Divided Province: the Folklorists of Lorraine, 1860–1960”, French Historical Studies, 23:4 (2000), pp. 639–682. 26 Fañch Postic, “La Vie et L’Oeuvre de l’Abbé François Cadic (1864–1929)”, in François Cadic, Contes et légendes de Bretagne: Les contes populaires (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 19–73. 27 François Duine, “Préface”, in Elvire de Cerny, Contes et Légendes de Bretagne (1856– 1898). Paris: Lechevalier, 1899), p. viii. 380 david hopkin explained by their social position: indeed, their peers feared that their folkloric interests would lead to a social déclassement. In any case, these men (and women) were not typical of French folklorists as a whole. Even in Brittany, where right-wing politics and traditionalism are often seen as conjoined twins, in fact folklorists were more likely to come from the left than the right, the inheritors not of Villemarqué but his opponent in the post-revolutionary elections of 1848 in Finistère, the Saint-Simonian folklorist Emile Souvestre. The leading Breton folklorists of the second half of the nineteenth-century—François-Marie Luzel, Adol- phe Orain, Anatole le Braz and Paul Sébillot—were all committed and active Republicans, the first two as editors of Republican newspapers.28 One of the most important collection of French folksongs published in the nineteenth-century, Jérome Bujeaud’s Chants and chansons populaires des Provinces de l’Ouest, was largely collected in the Vendée, an even more ‘White’ region than Brittany in terms of its political traditions, and one might think from Bujeaud’s introductory laments about the disappearance of rural custom and the folk muse that he was a Catholic Vendéan conservative with both a small and a large C, but on the contrary he was a Protestant Republican propagandist and enthusiast for new ‘scientific’ agriculture among the rural populations of the west. His brother, to whom he was very close personally and politically, was a communard.29 It is true that one can identify some folklorists who stood on the political right— for example Jean-François Bladé and Emmanuel Cosquin, both leading folktale collectors, were self-declared royalists, as was the composer and

28 The biographical information on French folklorists in this section is derived from a very wide range of sources, both manuscript and published. For brevity I have in each case only indicated the most substantial source in these notes. For example, on the background and careers of the Breton folklorists see: Fañch Postic (ed.) La Bretagne et la litté- rature orale en Europe (Brest: Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique, 1999); Françoise Morvan, François-Marie Luzel: Enquête sur une expérience de collecte folklorique en Breta- gne (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1999); and Yanne-Ber Piriou, Au-delà de la légende . . . Anatole le Braz (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1999). Paul Sébillot awaits his biographer, but see the papers from the colloquium held in Fougères in 2008 dedicated to his life and work which go some way towards fulfilling this need (Fañch Postic (ed.) Paul Sébillot, un républicain promoteur des traditions populaires (Brest: Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique, 2011). Orain has yet to attract much scholarly attention, but his own memoirs are attached to his La Chouannerie en pays Gallo. Suivi de mes souvenirs (Rennes: Armor, 1977). 29 Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, “Un Antiquaire progressiste: François Jérôme Marcel Bujeaud”, in Jean-Loïc Le Quellec (ed.), Collecter la mémoire de l’autre (Niort: Geste, 1991), pp. 32–41. folklore beyond nationalism 381 folksong collector Vincent D’Indy.30 However, the majority of those leading folklorists, whose political allegiances can be ascertained, identified with the Republic. Paul Sébillot, who can lay some claim to being the leading folklorist of the Third Republic, was also chef-de-cabinet to Yves Guyot, the Republican Minister of Public Works in the early 1890s and later a Dreyfusard campaigner. One of Sébillot’s key allies within the Société des Traditions Populaires, over which he presided, was the radical-socialist deputy for the Doubs and Comtois folklorist Charles Beauquier.31 It would be reasonable to conclude that the folklorists of the Third Republic were not unmarked by the political battles of their day, and that folklore collecting was not completely separated from this contentious political culture. But it is impossible to argue that folklore was always and everywhere the handmaiden of the political right. Of course ‘the invention of tradition’ for ideological purposes was never meant to be the preserve of the political right. Indeed Hobsbawm might easily have had Beauquier in mind when he referred to the bourgeois Radical Socialist grandees, “men of the centre masquerading as men of the extreme left”, who constructed an alternative ‘civil religion’ through the mass production of Republican ceremonies and monuments, and thus were able to retain their positions of dominance even in an era of mass politics. However, from Hobsbawm’s point of view, these Republican folklorists seem to have been inventing the wrong traditions.32 They did not keep “away from history” in favour of “general symbols”; rather they used provincial titles that directly invoked the ancien régime to demarcate their territories. For example, according to its sub-heading, Bujeaud’s collection was made not in the new post-revolutionary departments of the Vendée and Charente-Maritime but in the pre-revolutionary provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis and Angoumois; Beauquier’s likewise referred not to the department of the Doubs but to the ancien régime province of Franche-Comté. The material itself, the songs, tales and legends, dealt in

30 Jean Arrouye (ed.) Jean François Bladé (1827–1900) (Béziers: Centre d’étude de la lit- térature occitane, 1985); Raymonde Robert, “Emmanuel Cosquin et les contes lorrains”, in Roger Marchal and Bernard Guidot (eds), Lorraine vivante: Homage à Jean Lanher (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1993); Andrew Thomson, Vincent d’Indy and his World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 31 Beauquier, a philosopher of music and a campaigner for decentralisation and on environmental issues as well as a folklorist and politician, likewise awaits his biographer. 32 Eric Hobsbawm “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914”, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 269–273. 382 david hopkin a pre-revolutionary currency of kings, lords and priests (and indeed the pre-revolutionary currency of livres, sous and liards). If Bujeaud and Beau- quier were inventing traditions for political purposes they must have been confused about what those purposes were. In general one can say that there is no neat correlation between the political views of a folklorist and their scholarly work: the royalist Cos- quin published many tales that clearly articulated social conflict; the anticlerical Sébillot nonetheless lovingly recreated the hagiography of Breton saints. Although a substantial part of Sébillot’s work was driven by a desire to furnish from oral tradition the People’s history demanded by Michelet, undoubtedly a populist objective, he was obliged to admit that, “as is almost always the case when the record of historic events has taken on a traditional form, the two previously privileged orders retain a dominant place.”33 If folklore was ideologically motivated, it is not clear what ideology it served, at least in narrow party-political terms. The reason for this disjuncture between the folklorists’ avowed political commitments and the content of their collections is that, as Sébillot frequently acknowledged, the material itself did not bear out their initial assumptions. Rather than force the material to conform to their ideological preconceptions, most folklorists, at least of this generation, preferred to present the song or tale as it was told to them. The ability of nineteenth- century folklorists to adapt their ideas to their findings illustrates why the ‘invention of tradition’ is an insufficient concept. It emphasises the political motivation to invent, but neglects other motivations, sentimental or aesthetic for instance, that might drive the folklorist to accurately preserve and to nurture. Cultural history, and not only of the Marxist variety, has a tendency to reduce all motivations to the political, and all cultural objects to sites of conflict. As Dave Atkinson explains in this volume, folklorists themselves have learnt to be wary of the concept of ‘invented tradition’, because it operates without attention to the limits of invention. Historians might learn to be equally cautious. The folklorists of the Third Republic were more homogeneous in their social background than in their political allegiances. They were, almost to a man, the educated sons of the rural/small-town professional classes, in particular lawyers of one kind or another, though Le Braz was the son of a teacher and Sébillot the son of a doctor. Bladé and Cosquin were

33 Paul Sébillot, Croyances, mythes et légendes des pays de France (Paris: Omnibus, 2002), p. 1341. folklore beyond nationalism 383 both sons of notaries, Luzel and Sébillot were brothers to notaries. Victor Smith, whose thirty manuscript volumes of folk songs from the Velay and the Forez still sit in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal awaiting publication, was the son of a barrister from Saint-Etienne, though he seems to have spent more time in the household of his grandfather, justice of the peace at Chambon-Feugerolles (not then the industrial suburb it has become).34 Achille Millien, responsible for the single largest collection of folkloric texts made in nineteenth-century France (more than 900 tales and more than 2,500 songs), was nephew to a notary and destined for the same profession, as was Sébillot.35 The fathers of Sébillot and Cosquin were mayors, as was the father of Félix Arnaudin, an important folk song and tale collector in the Landes region south of Bordeaux. The brothers of Luzel and Sébillot, and the cousin of Arnaudin, would also become mayors of their home communities. This gives some indication of their families’ social standing. All of the folklorists named so far left home to go secondary school as boarders. In many cases this turned out to be a decisive moment in making them into mediators between the oral culture of their home communities and the national literate culture they were now exposed to. Most then went on to university, usually to study law. Sébillot and Luzel both dropped out, while Millien gave up his apprenticeship with a notary as soon as he could, in all three cases soon after their fathers died, and in all three cases originally to follow a career in the arts (Sébillot as a painter, Luzel and Millien as poets). Cosquin qualified as a lawyer but seems never to have practiced but turned to journalism; Bladé and Smith would practice to an extent, the first as a barrister, the second as a commercial judge. Arnaudin was the only one to have no occupation at all, but while the others did undertake work of various kinds, in journalism and the arts as well as the law, it is not obvious that these employments were their primary source of income. With the exception of Luzel, who really did have to work for a living as a teacher, they came not only from a professional class background but from a landowning, rentier class. In the case of Smith and Arnaudin, their tenants were among their first informants. A few could claim a closer relationship to the ‘folk’. Luzel and Louis Pineau, the latter the author of an autobiography entitled L’Enfance heureuse d’un petit paysan as well as two volumes of Poitevin folklore, came

34 P.C. Testenoire-Lafayette, “Victor Smith”, Revue du Lyonnais, 27 June 1899, pp. 2–29. 35 Daniel Hénard and Jacques Tréfouël, Achille Millien: Nivernais passeur de mémoire (Saint-Bonnot: Les filmes du lieu-dit, 2005). 384 david hopkin from farming backgrounds (though Pineau’s father ran a brick works and was more of a rural entrepreneur).36 Pineau would follow that well-worn path of social advancement from education into teaching. Some, such as Orain, whose father was a (bankrupt) tanner and who lived in his grand- parents’ lodging house, came from the commercial rather than the professional bourgeoisie. Yet even if one includes these individuals it would be fair to say that most of these future folklorists came from families that had materially benefited from of the Revolution, though not all would have happily acknowledged that debt. Bladé’s notary father bought biens nationaux; Luzel’s family saw its tenancy converted into outright ownership, and also traded in bien nationaux; Millien’s father made a small fortune buying out aristocrats in the post-revolutionary land market. Victor Smith’s grandfather was a Swiss industrialist who came to Saint-Etienne under Napoleon I to take advantage of the continental system. All had grown up in a degree of ease, for example they inhabited houses with servants: even Luzel and Pineau refer to ‘domestiques’ as part of their memories of their childhood households, though in their cases the term refers to farm servants. Bladé, Cosquin and Sébillot all associated oral storytelling with their nursemaids and in the case of the last two named, sought out their childhood carers in later life in order to write down their narratives. In Millien’s case the relationship was complicated by the fact that his mother had been his father’s servant. Although his parentage was subsequently legitimised and he grew up with all the benefits of his father’s wealth, his initial collecting was done through his mother’s family and her other contacts (Millien would go on to recreate a similar ménage). Arnaudin likewise associated folklore with servants, though in his case this meant the young servant girl who would become his life partner. While the relationship was still illicit he fantasised about her living on an isolated farm and recording for him the songs of her neighbours.37 The Reverend Wentworth Webster, Anglican chaplain to the British residents of Bayonne and Biarritz, and one of the first collectors of folklore in the

36 Léon Pineau, L’enfance heureuse d’un petit paysan (Poitiers: Delagrave, 1932). 37 This romance is detailed in Félix Arnaudin, “Journal” in Jean-Yves Boutet, Guy Latry and Jean-Bernard Marquette (eds), Félix Arnaudin: Journal et choses de l’ancienne Lande (Vol. 8 of the Oeuvres complètes), (Bordeaux: Confluences, 2003). The best biography of Arnaudin is provided in Guy Latry, “Arnaudin, à la lettre”, in Guy Latry (ed.) Félix Arnau- din: Correspondance (Vol. 5 of the Oeuvres complètes) (Bordeaux: Confluences, 1999). folklore beyond nationalism 385

French Basque country, took down the first tales he published from the servants in his household.38 So, folklorists were, by-and-large, educated, well connected, leisured types. Some, like Sébillot, had left their home communities to pursue careers in the city; others, like Millien, were more typical ‘culture-brokers’, living in the village and interpreting the demands of the state for the benefit of the locals while simultaneously translating the needs of the villagers into the language of officialdom. ‘Social tourists’ might be too strong a term but they were certainly separated in social terms from the individuals that would provide them with the material for their collections. They were themselves aware of this division because they had experienced it as a rupture in their own lives. Sébillot, Luzel, Pineau, and Arnaudin all commented on the shock of separation from their domestic world (and often quite literally their mother tongue) occasioned by schooling. School provoked the sudden revelation of the cultural gap between the world they had grown up in, the world of servants and rural neighbours, and the world they were intended for by their education. What has been described as folklorists’ nostalgia might be more fairly understood as personal attempts to repair that rupture. However, even at the time there were those who doubted their ability to do so. In 1912, during the course of a bitter dispute about precedence in the field of folklore, the Celti- cist Henri Gaidoz accused Sébillot of using his influence as ‘châtelain’ to extract tales almost like a latter-day seigneurial due.39 And it is true that Sébillot did possess a castle, though the more relevant pile, the château du Bordage at Ercé-près-Liffré, belonged to his brother-in-law Yves Guyot. During the summer of 1878, while meditating on an illustrated collection of Breton fairytales he had in mind, and sheltering from the rain that kept him from painting, he asked the daughter of the estate gardener, Marie Huchet (then fourteen), if she knew any tales. The narratives he heard from her, and the storytellers she introduced him to, would prove decisive for his career as a folklorist. Yet it would be hard to imagine a more unequal relationship: by age and sex, as well as social position, Sébillot was clearly the dominant figure, and that that is likely to have affected the way Marie told him her tales. Marie’s name appears below the texts

38 Bibliothèque municipale de Bayonne, Ms. 88 (Fonds Webster). I am grateful to Leonore Schick for bringing this fact to my attention. 39 See all the relevant documents under the heading “Les relations Gaidoz-Sébillot (1912–1913)” on the BEROSE website: http://www.berose.fr. 386 david hopkin she narrated in the first volume of Contes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne (1880), but it is Sébillot’s name on the front cover. However, this does not mean that we should reject Marie Huchet’s testimony as hopelessly mediated, at worst a male fantasy of female servility, at best a public transcript that acknowledged the bourgeois’s hegemonic power over culture and so completely at odds with the hidden transcript of social conflict voiced only in the privacy of the Huchet’s home. Most historical documents reach the archive through some channel of social or political power: we know the peasant, fisherman, or servant almost entirely through the work of the census-taker, judge, prefect, priest or army officer. Sébillot was unlike those representatives of power in that he could not compel Marie to tell her story, he could only ask. He came as a supplicant. Because she possessed something that he desired, in this context they met on more equal terms. Informants could use their store of cultural capital to trade with the collector. Sébillot was a conscientious patron to his informants, using his social and political position to find them sought-after jobs in the pensioned state sector, as customs officials, railway employees or members of the civil engineering corps.40 Achille Millien was likewise a constant letter writer on behalf of his informants. He would leave one third of his estate to the daughter of one his most forthcoming storytellers, Pierre Briffault, and he lent a substantial sum of money to another family of storytellers, the Valarchés, a debt that was subsequently written off.41 But to reduce the collector/informant relationship to an exchange transaction would not do it justice. Many informants were literate and wrote down their own texts rather than dictating them to the folklorist. It is evident from these self-penned collections, and the correspondence that accompanied them, that they thought of themselves as engaged in a collaborative project, derived from a shared aesthetic appreciation, and driven by a shared concern to record such oral masterpieces before they disappeared altogether. James Hogg’s mother’s retort to Walter Scott, that

40 On Sébillot’s patronage, see David Hopkin, “Storytelling and Networking in a Breton Fishing Village, 1879–1882”, International Journal of Maritime History 17:2 (2005), pp. 113–39. 41 The long history of this debt can be traced in the correspondence between Millien and various members of the Valarché family, in AD Nièvre, 82 J 358 (Fonds Mil- lien). Both the Briffaults and the Valarchés were distant relatives of Millien’s mother, so familial responsibilities also played a part here, but then so they did in Millien’s collecting strategies. folklore beyond nationalism 387 by writing down her ballads he had “spoilt them a’thegither”,42 is well known but is not necessarily typical of singers and storytellers. Some were certainly suspicious of the folklorists’ motives and reluctant to see their oral artistry reduced to print, but others were delighted that someone, especially someone as well known and well connected as Millien or Sébil- lot, was taking an interest in their cultural lives, and equally pleased to see their names in print. Some relationships were fleeting, but others—such as those between Millien and the Briffault family, Sébillot and the cabin- boy François Marquer (one of the few ‘folk’ informants who emerged as a author and contributor to folkloric publications in his own right), Smith and Toussaint Chavanaz, the bell-ringer of Saint-Just Malmont—were enduring and informed by a degree of mutual respect and friendship. Even the most suspicious informant, Jean-Marie Déguignet, who accused the “Jesuit and thief ” Le Braz of making off with his manuscript autobiography in order to mine it for its folkloric content, took some of his criticisms back when Le Braz finally did keep his promise and published a substantial section, under Déguignet’s name, in the Revue de Paris.43 Smith, Millien and Sébillot were following in the footsteps of Mother- well and Grundtvig (as David Atkinson explains in his chapter) in their commitment to recording the actual words spoken by a named individual informant on a specific occasion with “rigid fidelity”. All three would publish multiple versions of what is essentially the same song or tale, indicating the variations introduced by particular singers or narrators. This went hand-in-hand with an appreciation of the particular artistry of their different informants. While one can reasonably question what “rigid fidelity” meant given the technology available to them, their intention was not to distort the words of their informants, but as far as possible let them speak in their own words. They took substantial pains to set down accurately what their informants told them, interviewing them on many occasions and asking for explanations of whatever was not clear. The manuscripts in which Smith noted down the song and tale repertoire of the illiterate men- dicant Nannette Lévesque are full of indications of such conversations,

42 James Hogg, Memoirs of the Author’s Life and Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott (ed. D. Mack) (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972), p. 62. 43 Jean-Marie Déguignet, Mémoirs of a Breton Peasant (trans. Linda Asher) (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), pp. 427–9. On the validity of Déguignet’s accusations, see Alain Tanguy, “Anatole Le Braz sur le banc des accusés: l’affaire Déguignet à la lumière de documents inédits”, Bulletin de la société archéologique du Finistère 128 (1999), pp. 307–318 388 david hopkin which took place over the course of two years.44 Smith was interested not just in the material itself, but what meaning it had in Nannette’s life. Such relationships could only develop where there was an element of sympathy between informant and folklorist. It was precisely because they were attempting to represent their informants faithfully that they could not be, in Reay’s words, “oblivious to their lives”. In fact Smith, and some of his contemporaries such as Sébillot, were edging towards a social interpretation of folklore, one that focused not on the inheritance from a distant and probably mythical past but one firmly located in the contemporary life of the informant, one that understood folklore not as the collective property of whole ethnic groups but as bound up in the living culture of specific social groups, families and individuals, an interpretation not so far removed from Gramsci’s in fact. As Atkinson demonstrates, valorising the voice of the individual as opposed to the voice of ‘the People’ is also not without its problems, but it arose from a methodological scrupulousness, and a commitment to follow the standards of ‘scientific folklore’. Following ‘scientific’ standards would make it very difficult for this generation of folklorists to draw easy connections between folk culture and political nationhood.

The Development of the Science of Folklore According to George Dasent it was the Grimms who had “raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery fictions and old wives’ fables— to a study fit for the energies of grown men, and to all the dignity of a science.”45 Throughout the nineteenth-century folklorists would assert their fellowship with other emerging sciences and share in their search for natural laws governing not only physical but also cultural phenomena. For the Grimms the model science, to which folklore should look, was philology, but an equally powerful mode of thought in this early period derived from geology. Folklore was analogous to the fossil record: as William Thoms himself put it, “In our lower classes are still to be found sedimentary deposits of the traditions of remotely distant epochs”.46 Nor

44 Nanette Lévesque, Nanette Lévesque: conteuse et chanteuse du pays des sources de la Loire (eds Marie-Louise Tenèze and George Delarue) (Paris: Gallimard, 2000). 45 George Webbe Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse. With an Introductory Essay on the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales (2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1859), p. xx. 46 William Thoms quoted in Marian Roalfe Cox, An Introduction to Folk-Lore (David Nutt: London, 1895), pp. 3–4. See Gillian Bennett, “Geologists and Folklorists: Cultural Evolution and ‘The Science of Folklore’,” Folklore 105 (1994), pp. 25–37. folklore beyond nationalism 389 were these the only currents of scientific thought at work on folklorists: over the course of the century different folklorists would also assert the relationship of their subject to archaeology, anthropology, sociology and psychology. Folklore was not just a contributor to these more vigorous disciplines, it was a complimentary and equal field of scholarly endeavour. As investigations into all areas of human activity multiplied in the course of the nineteenth century, folklore’s claim to be recognised as a science was widely, if not universally, accepted. If Moltke Moe’s Chair in Folklore established at the then Christiana University in 1886 was the first such post (some make the claim for Kaarle Krohn at Helsinki), by 1914 the subject had found its way into numerous universities, and was rapidly developing the full apparatus of an academic subject, with international congresses, scholarly societies and journals. Folklore appeared alongside biology and geology as fit subjects for Sir John Lubbock’s series ‘Modern Science’ in 1892, just as it did among works on maths, chemistry and biology in the series ‘Encyclopédie Scientifique’, one of the main propagators of popular knowledge in turn-of-the-century France. The study of folklore (if not the material for its study) was not doomed to quaint revivalism by the arrival of the steam engine and the telegraph, on the contrary it was quite at home in the positivist age. The process of scientific acceptance was not always as smooth as Dasent’s genealogy suggests. Proving one’s scientific credentials might require the repudiation of one’s intellectual forefathers, who were often one’s patrons as well. This is well illustrated in the case of France by the ‘querelle du Barzaz-Breiz’. When, in 1867, Hersart de la Villemarqué published a new edition of his collection of Breton ballads (first published in 1838), it received a critical broadside from Henri d’Arbois de Jubain- ville in the Revue Critique d’Histoire et de Littérature, edited by Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris. All three were adepts of the new (and still considered Germanic) science of comparative linguistics. Jubainville delighted in the Barzaz-Breiz’s poetic achievements, but complained that “this new edition provides nothing new from a scientific point of view”.47 The quarrel between ‘le Beau et le Vrai’ became increasingly bitter: it was no use for Villemarqué, who like his critics was a product of the Ecole des chartes, to present his testimonials from Jacob Grimm: his methods, his intentions, and even his probity were attacked by folklorists associated with the ‘new

47 There are many accounts of this dispute, but the most relevant is Fañch Postic, “Le Beau ou le Vrai: ou la difficile naissance en Bretagne et en France d’une science nouvelle: la littérature orale (1866–1868)”, Estudos de litteratura oral 3 (1997), pp. 97–123. 390 david hopkin critical school’, such as Henri Gaidoz and François Luzel. In the 1870s and 80s, and in direct reaction to the perceived failings of Villemarqué’s “romantic and picturesque” folklore, emerged a new would-be science based on empirical fieldwork that produced data suitable for international comparisons, and presented according to clear scholarly standards. At least these were the intentions of the new reviews that concerned themselves with folklore in France: Romania (1872), Mélusine (1877), and the Revue des Traditions Populaires (1886). At first, in their pages, folklore remained closely tied to linguistics: Romania was, like the Revue Critique founded and edited by the philologists Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris; the first edition of Mélusine took as a position paper Gaston Paris’ lament for the state of folklore studies in France published in the Revue Critique more than ten years before. How- ever, when Mélusine was relaunched in 1884, it announced a decisive separation from the intellectual patronage of philology: under the influence of Andrew Lang, its editors, Henri Gaidoz and Eugène Rolland, announced that in the future their subject would be “the study of man, anthropology”. In practice Mélusine remained closer to its philological roots than its major rival in the sphere of French folklore, the Revue des Traditions Popu- laires, founded and edited by Paul Sébillot, who was a long-time member and future president of the Paris Société d’Anthropologie and an active member of the editorial board of its journal L’Homme (though this does not mean he was a wholehearted disciple of the British ‘anthropological school’ of Tylor and Lang).48 Contemplating the developments in the cultural sciences that had occurred in his lifetime, Villemarqué lamented to Sébillot, “You are lucky, you young people, to have scientific methods that allow you to publish folk tales in their integrity. We would not have dared in my time.”49 The quarrels that divided the romantic, literary folklorists from their more rigorous successors were personal and political as well as intellectual, but at the core they were about the orientation of the subject and whether it was to be the monumentalisation of ‘national culture’, or an international science, based on comparativist and material- ist principles. France was not a pivotal player in the elaboration of this new science, despite both Gaidoz’s and Sébillot’s attempts to take an organising role.

48 A discussion of the orientation of these journals is supplied on the BEROSE website: http://www.berose.fr. 49 Paul Sébillot, “Ce que m’a dit La Villemarqué”, Le Fureteur Breton 8 (1912), pp. 175– 178. folklore beyond nationalism 391

There was no Chair in folklore at any French university, for example. My point is to demonstrate that even at the fringes, a desire to be tested by scientific principles was being enunciated, and that this had consequences for the proponents of scientific folklore. For Luzel, for example, it meant repudiating the book, the Barzaz-Breiz, that he had declared his ‘bible’, and losing the support of some very influential patrons. It was difficult for him to commit himself in the ‘querelle du Barzaz-Breiz’, but he took that step because he felt obliged to follow the logic of the principles of research, even if these led to conclusions that were personally painful or ran counter to deeply held beliefs. One can take issue with the assumptions behind his critique of Villemarqué, as well as with the success with which he applied the scientific approach, but one must still appreciate the attempt to live by universally recognised rules of scholarship, rather than simply fitting material to a pre-existing political agenda (which was precisely the accusation levelled at Villemarqué). That is the trouble with the scientific method: once it is laid down as the measure of success, one must live with the results achieved. As folklorists wrote the handbooks of their new science, they were obliged to recognise one obvious fact about folklore: it provided very poor material on which to build theories of national difference. The customs, songs, tales and other collected genres that were their proper material of study, were not limited by national or indeed any political or administrative boundaries, but transcended them. Nor were they equally diffused within political units, but seemed the special possession of certain geographic, occupational or gender groups. Folklore was not national, or even regional, it was simultaneously more generalised and more particular. It was this fact that late nineteenth-century folklorists set out to explain. Consequently, rather than being, as Barry Reay alleges, in “absolute denial about the complexity of cultural interaction, the hybridity of orality and literacy, tradition and modernity”,50 folklorists were pioneer investigators of these topics, from whom cultural historians could still profitably learn.

Folklore and Universalism The difficulty in using folkloric material as the basis on which to erect theories of national difference and cultural hierarchy should have been apparent from the very beginning of the folk revival, in Johann Gottfried

50 Barry Reay, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2004) p. 2. 392 david hopkin

Herder’s 1778 collection of Volkslieder. Herder, the original relativist, and the original pluralist, always preferred the concrete particularities that separated one period, people or individual from another to generalised abstractions. He emphasised not the commonalities between Ossian and Homer, as so many other critics had, but what was distinctive about each. Yet Herder was also a humanist who believed in the underlying unity of all human action: there were many flowers but they made one garden, many notes but one symphony, even if God alone might appreciate the totality. The juxtaposition of the songs of many nations could not help but reveal their many shared qualities, the repeated topics, the similarities in treatment. Herder “ignored no voice; all entered into his heart and issued forth as a symphony.”51 If the wicked fairy of romantic nationalism stood as one godparent to the infant folklore, so did the benign fairy of internationalism, and the legacy of latter would also flower in the twentieth century, for example in the League of Nations’ Commission des Arts et Traditions Populaires.52 The Grimms also were not blind to the international connections in folk material and acknowledged, in the preface to the first edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, that theirs were not only German tales but widely diffused “for we find these tales, and precisely these tales, throughout Europe, thus revealing a kinship among the noblest peoples”,53 that is those whose languages were related to one another. The Grimms, like so many of the contemporary researchers into popular literature, started out as philologists. From the end of the eighteenth century the quality and quantity of philological scholarship was rapidly revealing the connections between most European languages as well as the connections to Asian languages both ancient and modern. Language in the first half of nineteenth century was the genetics of its age, the universal science, which would reveal the relationship of all parts to the whole. Nineteenth-century philologists, like folklorists, had a preference for organic metaphors, and so these various languages became branches on the ‘tree of languages’ with its roots in proto-Indo-European. Nationalists might prefer one

51 Giuseppe Cocchiara, The History of Folklore in Europe (trans. John McDaniel) (Phila- delphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), p. 177. 52 A brief history of this Commission can be found on the website of the Société internationale d’ethnologie et de folklore, its successor organisation: http://www.siefhome.org/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=58 (consulted 5 May, 2012). 53 Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, “Preface” to volume 1 of the first (1812) edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, reproduced in Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 209. folklore beyond nationalism 393 branch to another—though sometimes their choices might surprise us, Jacob Grimm rated English over German as a language—but they could not ignore their inter-connectedness and the difficulty in establishing hard and fast boundaries between them. What was true of languages was also true of their literatures, the oral literature of various linguistic groups bore obvious resemblances one to another and so demonstrated the links between them, rather than what separated them.54 Not surprisingly, therefore, it was from within the ranks of philologists that the first theorists of folklore emerged. One of the most influential was the Oxford based German Sanskritist Max Müller, as famous in his time as Charles Darwin, and discussed in Sara Hines essay in this volume. Müller saw in European folktales the remnants of Indo-European mythologies, which were themselves the result of a cultural devolution in which later generations, in a process that Müller termed a ‘disease of language’, mistook metaphors for expressions of a reality, and so converted their ances- tor’s straightforward appreciation of natural phenomena into worship of the gods who controlled those phenomena. The shared inheritance of this mythology linked the various peoples of Europe and Asia in the same way as the branches of the ‘tree of languages’. Celestial mythology was one of the first ‘scientific’ attempts to make sense of collected folklore.55 For the Grimms and for their intellectual descendants such as Thoms, as well as Müller, culture (like language) was mobile and plastic, but it moved and developed with the people who possessed it: the people themselves were not a primary vector of transfer. Thus culture could be a marker of racial identity, or as Dasent put it, “the history of a race is, in fact, the history of its language”.56 Dasent’s translations of Peter Asbjørn- sen’s and Jörgen Moe’s collection of Norwegian folktales appeared in the same year as the Origin of Species and seem to draw on a more biological spirit of the age. However, Dasent was no proto-racialist like Arthur de Gobineau: if occasionally he sounds like him it was because at the time

54 Christa Kamenetsky, The Brothers Grimm and their Critics: Folktales and the Quest for Meaning (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 1992), pp. 99–103. 55 Müller’s ideas are complex and cannot be summarised in one paragraph. Nor, despite Lang’s derision, can they be entirely disregarded. The best survey of the Müller/ Lang controversy is provided by Richard Dorson, “The Eclipse of Solar Mythology”, Journal of American Folklore 68 (1955), pp. 393–416. Lang himself, it is worth noting, moved back towards a devolutionist position later in life. 56 George Webbe Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse. With an Introductory Essay on the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales, (2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1859), p. xx. 394 david hopkin folklore appeared to open up vistas into the origins of humanity. It is difficult now to appreciate how intellectually exciting was the realisation that the history of the humanity went back much further than the Bible. For Dasent, talk of race migrations and racial conflict was less about establishing racial hierarchies than just working out what had happened in prehistoric times. Within a year, in the second edition to Popular Tales from the Norse, Dasent would go well beyond the previously unsuspected common Aryan ancestry of the Highlander and Sepoy mutineer (the book appeared the year after the Indian Mutiny, so this was a rather daring relationship to propose) to include West African Ananzi stories. Comparison of these revealed affinities to German, Norwegian, Indian and Egyptian tales,57 and so Dasent was forced to conclude, like Müller before him, “that all are children of the same father—whatever the country, the culture, the language, and the faith.”58 Almost simultaneously the Grimms themselves were also going beyond the boundaries of Indo-European: the last (1857) edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen produced during the Grimms’ lifetime contained a lengthy essay in which Wilhelm acknowledged that the explo- sion of collecting activity across the globe had produced evidence for the universality of the genre: similar folktale plots were not limited to the ‘noblest peoples’ of Europe, for “we see with amazement in such of the stories of the Negroes in Bornu, and the Bechuanas (a wandering tribe in South Africa) as we have been acquainted with, an undeniable connection with the German ones”.59 This essay was the basis for all later comparative research on folktales. The Grimms’ original ideas about the diffusion of folkloric material, and its meaning, were based on the limited material available to them at that time. But the century had witnessed a massive expansion in the availability of both ancient manuscripts and collections from oral cultures from well beyond the Indo-European tree of languages, thanks in very large part to the growth of empire. Shared descent, except one located at the most remote Adamic point, could not account for resemblances between European fairytales and those collected, for instance, by the missionary Andrew Callaway among the Zulu (one of Andrew Lang’s

57 Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, p. 480. 58 Quoted in Jennifer Schacker, National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy Tales in Nine- teenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 131. 59 Wilhelm Grimm, “Notes—Tales”, in Grimm’s Household Tales. With the Author’s Notes (trans. Margaret Hunt, intro. Andrew Lang) (London: George Bell and Sons, 1884), vol. 2, p. 581. folklore beyond nationalism 395 favourite references).60 Either folklore was diffused along different lines of migration than those of peoples, or folklore arose from some universal aspect of human experience, even the human condition. The period between 1850 and 1914 also witnessed the first systematic attempts to make sense of these cultural patterns that now appeared all but universal. Not all of these theories have stood the test of time, nor are they all compatible with each other, but they do demonstrate that folklorists could escape the nationalist straightjacket, and propose more entangled conceptions of cultural interaction. The views of one of these schools, the anthropological, have been well aerated in this volume already, in the chapters by Wingfield and Gosden and Hines (which also reveal Lang’s internal conflict between his commitment to positivist science and an enduring romantic attachment to his native Scotland). At the same time a very different universalism was developing in, of all places, Finland. As the chapters in this volume by Antonnen and Kurkela demonstrate, few European nationalisms relied more on folkloric material than was the case in Finland. In particular, the Kalevala, another example of that strange beast the oral epic, was conceived of as a charter for nationhood. But precisely because folklore achieved such prominence in Finland, and because of the promotion of fieldwork by and among the Finns, Finnish folklorists had at their disposal a mass of comparative data. The father and son team of folklorists Julius and Kaarle Krohn used this material to trace the origins of the various motifs in the rune songs, and demonstrated that, firstly, they were “not so ancient as has been believed up to now”, indeed post-dated the introduction of Christianity and therefore belonged to historic rather than mythological time; and secondly that “an important part—indeed the major part—of the material has been borrowed from myths and legends of other peoples.”61 In other words Finnish oral culture had migrated but not with the Finns: “it was the runes themselves that must have travelled, while the people remained where they were—from village to village, from parish to parish.”62 As this quote from Kaarle Krohn indicates, transmission was

60 Henry Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus: In their own Words, with a Translation into English (Springvale, Natal: J.A. Blair, 1868). 61 Julius Krohn quoted in Kaarle Krohn, Folklore Methodology: Formulated by Julius Krohn and Expanded by Nordic Researchers (trans. Roger Welsch) (Austin TX: American Folklore Society, 1971), p. 14. 62 Quoted in Juha Pentikäinen, “Julius and Kaarle Krohn”, in Dag Strömbäck (ed.) Lead- ing Folklorists of the North (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1971), p. 23. 396 david hopkin envisaged as primarily oral, from person to person. The Krohns developed several paths of migration for the rune songs, from east and west of Fin- land, thus making Finnish culture derivative of both Swedish and Rus- sian. Given that Finland had yet to fully establish its independence from both neighbouring powers, and given the extent to which culture had become the touchstone of Finland’s sense of autonomy, such arguments were potentially very damaging to the nationalist cause. Julius Krohn, a committed Fennoman, was deeply torn, but as we have seen with in the case of other late-nineteenth-century folklorists, the cause of science tri- umphed over the cause of the nation: “Once cannot build on deception and lies, even for the advantage or honor of one’s own nation.”63 Krohn’s methods for investigation the diffusion of culture would become known as the historical-geographical, or Finnish school of folklore. The Finnish methodology was based on the comparison of all versions of what was essentially (in terms of plot) the same song or tale, and establishing their relationship to each other across both time and space. Folk- loric texts altered with each performance, but they retained some ‘genetic’ qualities of their progenitors, and thus could be traced back to the original, and unique, source (biological metaphors were still de rigueur). The pattern of variation that could be established by mapping all versions simultaneously revealed the lines of migration through time. However, as the process of collection from oral performance was less than a century old, the Finns were forced to rely on the written record. Motifs that resembled contemporary folklore turned up in all kinds of older texts: in saints’ lives, medieval jest books, Shakespeare, the Bible . . . Necessarily, though, the further back in time one went the more one was reliant on the few cultures that possessed a written language and so one came at last to the Sanskrit literature of India, which according to some ‘Indianists’, became the fount of all folklore, and all culture. However, another line of argument, saw these manuscripts less as markers of the oral culture of a particular period but as themselves vec- tors of diffusion. There was a literary line of migration and descent so that, for example, the similarities between Indian and Chinese folklore was the result of the spread of Buddhism, and the transmission of its sacred literature, from one to the other. Similar lines were traced by the German Sanskritist Theodore Benfey and his French disciple Emmanuel

63 Quoted in Krohn, Folklore Methodology, p. 15. folklore beyond nationalism 397

Cosquin through literature from Asia, the Middle East and the Mediter- ranean to Europe.64 However, once culture become portable, in the shape of a manuscript or printed document, there was no necessity to associate its migrations with those of peoples, and thus the chain of common Indo- European descent could be broken. Literature could flow in all directions, from Egypt to India, from China to Persia, from Palestine to Spain. This literary history of folklore presupposed an author, a poet, an individual genius. What was collected from oral transmission was a mere echo of that original genius, a ‘sunk-down cultural good’ in the words of Hans Naumann. Putting the emphasis on the movement of texts brought together the diffusionist approach of the Finns with the devolutionist assumptions of the solar mythologists. According to this school of thought, folklore was always in process of decay, in danger of disappearing: one can find elements of this ‘devolutionary premise’ also in the thinking of Jacob Grimm and among the Finnish school.65 However, Julius Krohn himself was more an ‘evolutionist’. He agreed with the British anthropological school that folklore was not (or not only) the detritus of higher cultural forms, but rather provided the building blocks for them. Thus the oral epic the Kalevala could be assembled from the mass of material available to the rune poets. Where the Finns differed from Lang and his followers, both in Britain and the continent, is that they believed there was a single point of origin, folklore was monogenetic, whereas for the anthropological school the remarkable cultural similarities between widely separated peoples were not the result of diffusion, but a consequence of a uniform pattern of social development. Evidently these principles—monogenetic or polygenetic, devolutionary or evolutionary—are not easily reconcilable. It has not been my purpose in this chapter to suggest that any of the nineteenth-century folklorists had achieved a correct interpretation, but rather simply to demonstrate that they were trying to grapple with precisely those problems that, according to Barry Reay, they were in denial about: “the complexity of cultural interaction, the hybridity of orality and literacy, tradition and modernity”. The British anthropological school thought of European folklore as fragments, as ‘survivals in culture’ from a previous and more primitive epoch

64 Giuseppe Cocchiara, The History of Folklore in Europe (trans. John McDaniel) (Phila- delphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), pp. 296–305. 65 Alan Dundes, “The Devolutionary Premise in Folklore Theory”, Journal of the Folklore Institute 6 (1969), pp. 5–19. 398 david hopkin of civilisation, which could only be interpreted thanks to the evidence provided by fully functioning primitive societies outside Europe. But in the last decades before the First World War the primitive was relocated from the geographical periphery to the centre. However modern, however civilised the European citizen, the irrational lay within. The continuing psychological presence of the primitive in contemporary life was already acknowledged by the anthropological school, and was developed in Brit- ain by the Cambridge ritualists, inspired by James Frazer (a vice-President of the Folklore Society), and in France by a series of scholars including Emile Durkheim, Arnold Van Gennep, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Claude Lévi-Strauss (not that they would appreciate being lumped together in this way). Freud himself was also a collector of popular oral culture in the form of the joke. Folklore was not just a way of exploring distant times, but also the equally unknown regions of the human pscyhe. This is not to suggest that these scholars agreed with each other about the significance of folklore, but that, in this psychological perspective, national cultural boundaries were as nothing compared to the universals of human experience and human development.

Conclusion I have not attempted in this chapter to give any kind of definitive summary of the political positions of nineteenth-century folklorists, nor of their theories, but simply to point out that these are less straightforward nationalistic than is often assumed. Nor is there any simple correlation between political and intellectual positions: one could be a nationalist in political terms but an internationalist in scholarship. Many of those mentioned in this chapter, such as the Grimms and the Krohns, would fall into this category. Recognising the universalism of folkloric phenomena does not preclude chauvinism or even xenophobia. Anyone who has felt a twinge of patriotic pride watching ‘their’ Olympic athletes perform derived activities and bearing derived symbols to the theme-track of derived anthems will understand that nationalist feeling does not require any element of cultural difference. Indeed, as Freud recognised, it might be when people were most similar that they felt the greatest need to elaborate on the remaining differences. His concept of the ‘narcissism of minor difference’ has been applied with some success to accounts of nationalism.66

66 Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, London: Chatto & Windus, 1993, pp. 14–19. folklore beyond nationalism 399

Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that the search for cultural and ethnic difference was not necessarily the guiding principle of nineteenth- century folklorists, nor was it of prime importance to them when discovered. One could readily apply Giuseppe Cocchiara’s judgement on the British anthropological school to folklorists as a whole: they were founders of “a true internationalism in which, regardless of race and color, each nation was called to participate, in the name of man.”67 Why then, among academic disciplines, is folklore uniquely haunted by the ‘phantoms of romantic nationalism’?68 Medics were more likely than folklorists to collaborate with the Nazis, and to more vicious effect, but medicine as an academic subject is not thereby vitiated. Partly the answer lies in folklorists’ own attempts to distance themselves from their intellectual forebears and by so doing drawing more attention to their failings than their triumphs. The search for academic purity can be destructive, especially in a small subject. One wonders whether the recent trend towards self-criticism and tall poppy slaying in other social sciences might be a sign or a symptom of impending academic marginality. But as a historian I wonder whether the question should be turned on its head: how is history, as an academic subject, able to continue blithely regardless of its own romantic nationalist phantoms? This is not to suggest that historians have neglected nationalism as a topic, nor that they are unaware of the role that their nineteenth-century forebears played in the erection of nationalist mythologies. Rather it is to question the continued use of the nation-state as the primary organising principle in history writing, especially in those sub-fields such as social and cultural history in which the state itself may not have been a major player. One might question whether it is even appropriate to speak of ‘a social history of France’ or ‘a cultural history of Spain’, but surprisingly such reflections are seldom voiced by historians. Having challenged some of Barry Reay’s conclusions this chapter (which I have extrapolated to refer to folklorists as a whole, he himself was only referring to British folksong collectors), I must acknowledge that he does grapple with exactly this topic, and argues that so locally varied are its social and cultural arrangements ‘that it forces a rethinking of any conception of a “rural England”. As suggested in the title of this book, we

67 Cocchiara, The History of Folklore in Europe, p. 464. 68 Roger D. Abrahams, “Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics”, Journal of American Folklore 106 (1993), pp. 3–37. 400 david hopkin need to replace it with rural Englands.’69 But perhaps the addition of an ‘s’ is not enough, and the challenge to the historian is to dispense with the national category altogether. The microhistoric impulse evident in Reay’s work offers an escape, but not necessarily a solution. Microhistorians have been among the most interested readers of folklore in recent decades, but in their hands the cultural artefacts collected by folklorists are make to speak in and for very particular contexts, specific both in place and time. Context is everything, without it the artefact is meaningless. According to Wolfgang Behringer, “for our interpretation, the question of origins is of almost no significance . . . Instead it is crucial to see that stories . . ., independent of their derivation or origin, were lived contemporary reality”.70 Or as the French microhistorian Jean-Claude Schmitt put it even more pithily in a direct reproach to the anthropological school, “there is no such thing as a ‘survival’ in culture, everything is lived or it is not.”71 However, the insuf- ficiency of this formulation would strike any nineteenth-century philologist: every time we open our mouths to speak we inherit the thoughts of generations past, and if we are to communicate it is essential that our auditors share a set of referents, which are necessarily located in the past. Nineteenth-century folklorists were not, one must admit, attentive enough to the immediate context, but then historians might be more attentive to enduring cultural patterns, extensive both in space and time, that so fascinated folklorists. Continuity deserves the historian’s attention as much as change. Belief in elves or fairies may take on a particular meaning in the context of Iceland, just as the story of the Red Bull of Etin did in the Scottish Borders, but given how widespread were such beliefs and such tales, their significance cannot only derive from that context. The local and the national are both worthy categories, but the cultural historian also requires some alternatives. The recent trends towards transnational history, Atlantic (or Indian Ocean, or Pacific, or even North Sea) history, and ‘entangled histories’ have provided useful vehicles for looking at cultural transmission and confrontation. The history of cultural display in world fairs and open-air museums discussed by Angela Schwarz and

69 Barry Reay, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave: Bas- ingstoke, 2004) pp. 205–206. 70 Wolfgang Behringer, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), p. 146. To be fair to Behringer, he only comes to this conclusion after a consideration of origins. 71 Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Note critique: ‘Religion populaire’ et ‘culture folklorique’”, Annales ESC 31 (1976), p. 946. folklore beyond nationalism 401

Daniel De Groff in this volume, offers one excellent example of the entangled history of nationalism, as do the architectural history provided by Peter Blundell Jones, the visual history of banknotes offered by Ilia Rou- banis, and the paths of literary transmission explored by Joep Leerssen. Folklorists certainly played their part in the transmission of the cultural practice of nationalism through international networks. (Although he has not featured much in this volume, one might argue that Sir Walter Scott, ballad collector and hunter after folk histories, did more than anyone else to teach Europeans how to be nationalists.) However, my purpose in this conclusion has been to suggest, despite false starts, and despite some strange conclusions, nineteenth-century folklorists were also interested in patterns of cultural transfer and cultural persistence that transcend (and undermine) the boundaries of the national. As Pertti Antonen has demonstrated in his chapter on the Kalevala, one purpose of constructing a history is to endow the present with a sense of progress. We have history, therefore we are modern, even post-modern. By deconstructing the edifice of nationalism we inherited from the nineteenth century, we can progress into a post-national world. Such teleologies are all but inevitable in any historical investigation. My point is that if we locate folklorists only in the realm of nineteenth-century historicism and nation-building, we may neglect their other intellectual contributions. As historians undertake their search for alternatives to the established territorial categories, they might do worse than look to folklore and its long history of going beyond the national to explore both the varieties and unities in human culture.