76743720 Acknowledgments The writing of this dissertation has been a colourful, enlightening, and unique experience, and has left me indebted to a large number of people. And so I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to: My supervisor, Emma Loosley, for all of her invaluable advice and wealth of infectious enthusiasm; I hope I’ve done you proud. Peter Milner and all of the members of the Boggart Hole Clough Community Action Trust, for showing me around the park, introducing me to the ‘Boggart monolith’, and for keeping the park the beautiful place that it is. Park warden, Saul Mearns, for digging up old stories and postcards of Boggart Hole Clough, answering dozens of my questions, and putting so much effort into making the park special. Members of the local groups, the ‘strollers’ and the ‘coffin dodgers’, particularly Peter Carr and Derek Mitchell, for regaling me with such fascinating stories about the park. Staff at Holy Trinity CE Primary School, Ms. Jeffries, Ms. Howl and Ms. Norris, for the invaluable information and photographs they supplied, and their eagerness to help. Stef Portersmith for sending me the script of her play, Boggarts of the Clough: A Fairytale , and for happily answering my questions. The volunteers at North Manchester FM for inviting me on air to publicise my project and encourage local residents to participate. The twenty-four local residents who were happy to share their memories of Boggart Hole Clough – and without whom this dissertation would have been much shorter and far less interesting to write. To my entire family, for enlisting friends and neighbours to be interviewed, for proof-reading my first drafts, and for showing an enthusiastic interest in this dissertation from beginning to end. In particular, Mum and Simon for putting a (rent-free) roof over my head while I studied; Dad, for pointing me in the direction of the ‘Boggart Brewery’ and for very kindly sampling the Boggart beers himself – for research purposes only, of course; and Mark, for practically funding my MA and chivalrously defending my choice of topic to anyone who claimed that I ‘should have taken a science subject’. And, finally, to Stel, who was so eager to offer help and advice about researching local history for my project, but sadly is not here to see the finished product. I dedicate this dissertation to your memory. 11 76743720 THE SUBURBAN BOGGART: Folklore’s survival, revival, and recontextualisation in an urban, post-industrial environment Introduction In 1932, American folklorist Ruth Benedict stated rather matter-of-factly that ‘folklore has not survived as a living trait in modern civilization’ (1932: 292). If we cast our gaze back to the views of earlier folklorists, it becomes clear that this assertion was a popular one, certainly not exclusive to the twentieth century. In 1879, for example, Henderson remarked that ‘old beliefs and superstitions, which have held their ground in the universal mind from the remotest antiquity, are fast fading away and perishing’ (1879: vii). Three hundred years earlier, in 1584, Reginald Scot was making a similar observation, with the claim that belief in folkloric beings such as ‘Robin goodfellow, and Hob gobblin’ had declined in the preceding century (Williamson 1964: 123). Folklore, it appears, has been ubiquitously heralded a fragile, tenuous, and endangered phenomenon. Consequently, society has gone to great lengths to conserve its folk-beliefs and customs, convinced that they would someday soon become utterly and irrevocably extinct, and it was, so the theory goes, the twentieth century that witnessed this inevitable extinction. Max Weber called it the ‘disenchantment of the world’, a world now ‘characterized by rationalisation and intellectualization’ (1948: 155). Western society has transitioned into what Taylor has termed a ‘secular age’ (2007: 1); the fertile fields in which folklore once flourished are now hostile and barren, and it is the oft-blamed twins of Urbanisation and Industrialisation that are perceived as the two prime culprits for our ‘disenchantment’. The Industrial Revolution drove the ‘folk’ from their traditional world of rural hamlets and villages to the cities and, according to Foster, who was writing in the 1950s, this transition into an impersonal urban environment proved fatal for any folk customs that had attempted to penetrate the cities’ boundaries. Industrial economies, he wrote, ‘are not conducive to the continuation of folk culture. Hence, it can be assumed that folk cultures will disappear in those places where a high degree of industrialization develops’ (1952: 171). Fifty years later, Redner took a similar stance, attributing our loss of local, native culture to ‘cultural 12 76743720 homogenization...which we now describe by that ominous term “globalization.”’ (2004: 2); the Western world has, Redner asserted, become a ‘monoculture’, in which no local traditions or customs can survive (2004: 2). Redner and his predecessors paint a rather dour picture, the contention being that folklore cannot, and has not, survived the processes of urbanisation, industrialisation, and globalisation. Consequently, the vast majority of the Western world is now believed to possess no folklore, save for the rapidly disintegrating residues of folk-beliefs that belong to a past age. However, not all folklorists concur with this rather pessimistic outlook. Dorson remarked that ‘everywhere one hears the lament that new technological systems have doomed the old word-of-mouth folkways. How can man talk above the roar of the machine?’ (1976: 125), and yet, as Dorson himself asserted, ‘man’ clearly does continue to talk – even in the post-industrial, urban societies of the modern day. Portuguese-American folkloric belief in the feiticeiro (witch) and the quebrante (evil eye), for example, are still very much alive today in Oakland, California; ‘not in the southern mountains but in the heart of an industrial city’ (Dorson 1976: 55), and as Dore illustrated in his City Life in Japan , folk practices still abound in Tokyo, the world’s largest metropolis; shrines dedicated to the kami -protector of the clan or village are now erected in the city, and have become known as ‘Metropolitan Shrines’ (1958: 296). McKelvie, studying the folk-traditions of the industrial and urban areas of the West Riding of Yorkshire, his research centring on Bradford, found similar results: family and neighbourhood traditions flourished in the forms of sayings and proverbs (1963: 88), and belief in lucky talismans, ranging from pieces of stalactite to black beans, as well as superstitious rituals and ‘magic’ cures, still abounded in the Bradford area (1963: 92-93). McKelvie thus concluded that ‘folk traditions not only survive, but thrive, in the large urban areas’ (1963: 93). He was, however, conducting his research in the 1960s; five decades have now passed, and questions concerning the survival of folklore in urban, industrialised environments have resurfaced. It is the objective of this thesis, therefore, to ascertain whether folk-tales and beliefs are still evident in the urban centres of the twenty-first century, and where better to discover if folklore survived industrialisation than in arguably the first industrial city in the world: Manchester (Hall 1998: 310)? 13 76743720 It is not only Manchester’s reputation as the first, and consequently prototypical, industrial city that recommended itself as this thesis’ case-study – although this was, obviously, a primary factor. Additionally, however, I was endeavouring to rectify a notable void in the scholarship of folklore; very few – if any – scholars have exhibited an interest in the folklore of Manchester since the nineteenth century. This is possibly due to an unfortunately widely held opinion that the folk-beliefs of one’s own society are less worthy of investigation than the folk-beliefs of another society, an opinion which Dundes and Pagter lamented in their work on urban folklore (1975: xiv). Scholars shy away from staying ‘too close to home’ in their academic interests, ‘[y]et it should be obvious’, Dundes and Pagter wrote, ‘that, if folkloric texts from other societies are deemed valuable, why shouldn’t texts from one’s own be accorded similar status?’ (emphasis in original) (1976: xiv). It is for these reasons, therefore, that I sought a case-study in Manchester. The case-study for this thesis is an urban park named Boggart Hole Clough, situated less than three miles north of Manchester’s city centre (Figs. 1-2). It covers 171 acres, 1 skirting the border between the areas of Blackley and Moston. Having been classified as Ancient Woodland by Manchester City Council, 2 its history is a long one; its abundance of birch, hazel, alder, and oak have survived since at least 5000 BC, and evidence of early habitation has been discovered in the form of an Early Bronze Age spearhead found in the area. 3 One of our earliest references to the park comes from Kuerden’s MS, Chetham Library, fol. 274 (Fig. 3), which records a survey taken by Edward II in 1322, describing the land as the property of Rob Buth and Albert Grelle, the fourth baron of Manchester, and as primarily pastoral, with enough pasture for five hundred cattle and deer (Seale 1983: 19). Boggart Hole Clough survived deforestation, unlike other areas of Manchester, through its use as a deer- park, owned and exclusively used by the Lords of Manchester (Seale 1983: 110). This seignorial deer-park originally stretched for 2.5 miles from Harpurhey up to Alkrington (Seale 1983: 15), and although now it is much reduced in size, it is still the second largest open space in North Manchester (Fig. 4). 4 It was purchased by Manchester 1 Report written by a previous park warden of Boggart Hole Clough, discussed in an interview with Saul Mearns, park warden, 2011. 2 http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/200073/parks_and_open_spaces/1816/boggart_hole_clough/1 3 Milner, P.