Who were the first folklorists? The Brothers Grimm perhaps? Or perhaps some of the antiquarians of the early modern age? Such individuals can certainly claim to be amongst the first to systematically collect and study folklore as a distinct subject. Indeed, many of their ideas (and some of their prejudices) still influence how many people study folklore today.
But were they really the first?
During the Middle Ages there were a surprising number of scholars who wrote about folklore: collecting and re-telling folktales, myths and legends from their own times. But who were they? And what can they tell us of folklore from medieval times?
Firstly, most of them were clerics of one sort or another. This is hardly surprising since very few people, aside from clerics, were literate enough to write a book in the Middle Ages. However, despite this shared background, they were a surprisingly diverse group of people, with quite different motivations and agendas. And what they chose to record represents an invaluable historic account of folk belief in medieval times. In this article we’ll look at some of these early folklorists and explore who they were, what kind of folklore they collected, and why they collected it.
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Perhaps one of the most influential folklore collectors in British history is surely Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is thanks to Geoffrey that the legend of King Arthur exists in the form in which we understand it today.
Before going further, I need to qualify the assertion ‘Perhaps one of the most influential…’. The word ‘perhaps’ is key here and I use it deliberately because we simply do not know what sources Geoffrey used.
Geoffrey’s work was perhaps based on a substantial collection of oral folk tradition, unrecorded (or, at least, not surviving) elsewhere. However, it is just as likely that his work was mostly a complete work of fiction. And there is also third possibility. Geoffrey himself claimed that his work was based on a mysterious ancient book. However, no one aside from Geoffrey has ever seen this book and even many of Geoffrey’s near contemporaries did not believe it existed.
So, who was Geoffrey of Monmouth?
Geoffrey was a cleric from the Welsh borders, living in the early 12th century. Although clearly familiar with Welsh folklore, he probably wasn’t Welsh. Rather, he was a member of the Anglo-Norman elite who lived and worked in the vicinity of Oxford for much of his career. And, of course, he is most famous for his great work of Arthurian legend: History of the Kings of Britain.
History of the Kings of Britain
Prior to Geoffrey, all that survives of the tales of King Arthur are fragmentary and incomplete at best. Geoffrey, as far as we can tell, gives us the first detailed written account of Arthur’s story, presenting Arthur as King of the Britons and introducing us to such characters as Guinevere and Uther Pendragon. He also writes about Arthur’s famous sword, which he calls Caliburnus (later renamed Excalibur by French writers).
Geoffrey compiled his history by drawing on a number of earlier sources. These included chronicles, dynastic tales, oral folk traditions, bardic poems and so on. His stories of Merlin, for instance, are drawn from earlier Welsh folk tales about a mad Welsh bard originally known as ‘Myrddin the Wild’. However, exactly what proportion of Geoffrey’s tales are fictional and what are genuinely part of earlier tradition is hard to gauge. William of Newburgh, writing later in the 12th century, claimed that “it is quite clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, or indeed about his predecessors…was made up”
A British Foundation Myth
How we regard Geoffrey now depends very much on how we assess what he set out to do when he wrote his history.
Geoffrey was a member of a French speaking Anglo-Norman elite, fully invested in the emerging chivalric court culture of his time. As such, he would have been familiar with the growing body of mythology surrounding the French King Charlemagne and his paladins. He would also have been aware of the importance of Aeneas in Rome’s foundation myths. Britain, by contrast, had no such foundation mythology. Indeed, Britain had very little by way of written history at all between the end of Rome and the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England.
Part of Geoffrey’s aim in writing his history, was to fill in the gaps. In doing so, he hoped to establish a foundation narrative comparable with Rome’s Aeneas or France’s Charlemagne. It was a grandly ambitious undertaking – to create a foundation myth for an entire people – and, it would have Arthur at its heart.
Monmouth elevated Arthur from the status of poorly recalled hero from the distant past to that of a national legend. The only question is, did he do it by drawing on a pre-existing rich oral tradition of Arthurian folklore? Or did he, in fact, make most of it up?
Walter Map
One important medieval collector was Walter Map, a cleric (the archdeacon of Oxford) and an important courtier of Henry II. Map is famous for his work De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles), a collection of stories, anecdotes and folktales concerning (albeit sometimes tangentially) court life. It was written in a style designed to entertain a 12th century courtly elite.
Folktales form just one facet of De Nugis and are typically deployed to support Map’s witty observations. The very title of the work itself suggests that Map regarded his subject matter as entertaining trivia. For example, he uses the tale of King Herla (an early Wild Hunt tale) to draw satirical comparisons with the Plantagenet court (which was largely itinerant at this time). In introducing the Herla story Map writes “One Court and one only do stories tell of that is like our own.” The joke, of course, being that the Plantagenet court, like Herla’s, was doomed to a life of endless wandering.
The Tale of King Herla
Map’s story of King Herla introduces Herla as an old British king living before the time of the Saxons. The tale begins when Herla’s court is visited by a mysterious otherworldly dwarven king whose appearance was very much like a classical faun or satyr. The faun-king invites Herla to attend a wedding at his own court, proclaiming his friendship and an ancient kinship with the British.
Herla and his entourage travel to the faun-king’s court, which transpires to be a magnificent underworld domain. Here Herla and his party were entertained and lavished with gifts before finally departing.
However, on Herla’s return to our world, the king and his companions find that centuries have passed, and the Saxons now rule Britain. Furthermore, they find themselves condemned to wander the land as a spectral host, unable to dismount.
Herla and his spectral companions continue to haunt the realm until they finally disappear during the reign of Henry II (at around the time Walter was writing).
A Satire on Court Life
Map uses folktales primarily to add colour to his observations on court life. His folklore collection therefore represents an incidental consequence of a wider endeavour. Map ultimately doesn’t regard folklore as a distinct field of study. Rather, Map regards it as entertaining trivia to be considered in the same vein as amusing courtly anecdotes.
Nevertheless, Map’s work represents a key surviving source for medieval folklore.
Gerald of Wales
Gerald was another cleric (archdeacon of Brecon) serving as Henry II’s royal clerk. Two of his works are of specific interest for folklorists (Topographia Hibernica and Descriptio Cambriae). One is a book about Ireland and the second concerns Wales.
If we take Topographia, it is structured into three major sections: ‘Topography and Natural History’, ‘The Wonders and Miracles of Ireland’ and ‘Of the Inhabitants of Ireland’. It therefore covers Irish geography, culture and society as well as folkloric material. It is intended to act as a guide to 12th century Ireland, written primarily for a Plantagenet court audience.
Wonders and Miracles
In the introduction to Wonders and Miracles, Gerald describes its content as “facts which, being contrary to the laws of nature, call forth our wonder and amazement”. Notably, Gerald did some fieldwork for this collection. He travelled extensively in Ireland, eliciting material by “the authentic testimony of trustworthy men who have lived in the district of which I write”.
Gerald’s material was varied. Some related to natural phenomena that he couldn’t explain; some to reported miracles; and some to contemporary folk beliefs. This material is quite wide ranging, encompassing such wonders as miraculous islands, enchanted bells, magical horns, cursed ravens and giants. Perhaps Gerald’s best-known story, however, relates to werewolves.
The Werewolves of Ossory
Gerald’s werewolf tale speaks of an unnamed priest who encounters a wolf in the woods in the region of Ossory. To his amazement, the wolf can speak. It tells him that he is in fact a man, transformed into wolf form by means of magic. He claims that every seven years, two people from his village are thus transformed. And, after a period of seven years, they return to human form, and the curse passes to a different couple. Currently, it is he and his wife who are afflicted.
The curse, the wolf claims, was placed on his people by Saint Natalis in punishment for wrongs committed by their ancestors. However, the wolf needs the priest’s aid, since his wife has sickened and is near to death. He asks the priest to perform last rites for her. This the priest does and, as the woman dies, the priest removes her wolf skin to reveal an elderly woman beneath.
Gerald the Fortean
Gerald, unlike Map, separates out material that is primarily folkloristic in character for specific treatment. However, unlike later folklorists he does not explore the question of what folklore may tell us of the past. Neither does he connect folklore with ‘folk’ specifically, nor does he have any sense of folklore as representing disappearing old traditions and beliefs.
Gerald is far more concerned with whether folk beliefs contain genuine truths yet to be explained. In this sense his selection of subject matter and his treatment of it is of a more Fortean character. He relates unexplained phenomena and contemporary myths that, for the most part, he believes people of his time can witness first hand. He concedes that the wonders he reports may seem hard to believe but nevertheless feels they must have a natural explanation. Or, as he would put it, “the God of Nature moulds nature as he pleases and makes that natural which appears unnatural”.
When he speaks of werewolves in Ireland, he is not talking about some myth or legend from the distant past. He is talking about a phenomenon which he believes occurred within living memory and which, potentially, might still be witnessed firsthand in his own time.
William of Newburgh
William of Newburgh was first and foremost an historian, writing at the end of the 12th century. He was, it goes without saying, another cleric, specifically an Augustan canon.
Most of his work deals with history but he does make occasional reference to folkloric beliefs in his writing. These form only a minor (and incidental) part of his work. Nevertheless, some of his stories provide an invaluable insight into 12th century folkloric beliefs. It is William, for example, who relates the curious tale of the ‘green children’ of St Martin’s Land. He also provides us with particularly valuable insight into contemporary beliefs relating to hauntings and the undead.
The Walking Dead
The idea of corpses returning from the grave to haunt the living dated back to pagan times. In Old French such entities were called ‘revenants’, meaning ‘returning’, as in returning from the grave.
William, it seems, was a believer. In his history he informs us that he limited his accounts of revenants to four because: ‘to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome’.
The Bedford Revenant
One of William’s stories occurred in Bedfordshire and concerned a farmer who accidentally stabbed himself with a knife, after tripping and falling. His wound proved fatal, and he quickly bled out before he could receive his last rites.
The farmer’s wife, aware her husband had not led an especially Christian life, consulted a local wise woman. Following her advice, the wife placed a jet bead on her husband’s coffin, hoping this would be sufficient to protect his corpse. She also hung ‘mare stones’ in the rafters of her house to act as an additional warding.
But these precautions were of no use. The farmer’s corpse rose from the grave the very next night and began a reign of terror across the local region.
The dreadful haunting only came to an end when, on the local bishop’s instructions, the farmer’s body was exhumed. The corpse was found to be swollen with blood and the funeral shroud torn to shreds. It stank of decay but was still unnaturally warm and pliable. These were the sure signs of a blood-sucking fiend: a vampire. To lay the fiend to rest, a scroll of absolution, sealed in a lead case, was placed on the chest of the revenant and the coffin re-sealed.
William the Folklorist
William of Newburgh’s accounts of the walking dead show that belief in such phenomena appears to have been fairly widespread in late 12th century England.
However, despite the value of his contributions, William was first and foremost an historian rather than a folklorist. And it is for his history for which he is best remembered.
Gervase of Tilbury
Gervase of Tilbury was a lawyer and cleric, also associated with Henry II. However, Gervase was a generation or two removed from Walter Map and Gerald of Wales, writing as he was in the early 13th century.
He is perhaps best known for his work, Otia Imperialia (“Recreation for an Emperor”) which he compiled for Henry II’s grandson, Otto IV of Germany. Otia is a form of literature known as Speculum Literature, a genre that was very popular during the High to Late Middle Ages. Such works attempted to create an encyclopaedic account of everything relating to its chosen subject.
In the case of Otia, the subject matter covered is very wide ranging and includes commentary on topics as diverse as history, geography, folklore and physics. It is divided into three parts. The first deals with world history but is primarily biblical in character, focusing on the creation story and the story of the Great Flood. The second is a geographical treatise and the third is a compendium of ‘marvels’ – and it is this latter section that focuses on folklore, myth and legend.
The Book of Marvels
Otia is sometimes called a book of marvels because of its third section. It contains a variety of material including fables attributed to classical times and more contemporary (for the late 12th century) folk tales.
One tale is a Gloucester variation of the Fairy Cup legend (in this case The Fairy Horn). In this tale Gervase tells us that there is a mound in Gloucester where any huntsman might receive a drink from a fairy bearing a drinking horn. One huntsman apparently stole the vessel and presented it to the Earl of Gloucester to gain favour. Alas, it backfired, as the earl had the huntsman executed as thief!
Gervase also recounts the earliest version of the Wandlebury Legend. It relates to an iron age hillfort, located to the southeast of Cambridge. Gervase tells us that in ancient times Christians were savagely massacred there. More significantly, he claims that any knight who enters the inner ring at night may challenge its guardian. Should they do this a phantom knight will respond to the challenge and contest with the challenger until one of them is unhorsed.
To Please an Emperor
Gervase’s marvels and wonders are presented as examples of the fantastic and the exotic. He leaves the door open as to whether there might be any truth behind his stories. Their veracity as well as their wider cultural significance are of secondary concern. First and foremost, this is a collection of exotic stories, intended to entertain and impress Gervase’s patron, Otto IV.
Jacobus de Voragine
Archbishop Jacobus de Voragine lived and worked in northern Italy in the mid-to-late 13th century. He was originally a Dominican friar (prior to his elevation to the position of Archbishop of Genoa). This meant that, unlike many clerics, he was able to travel amongst the people rather than being locked away in a cloister. Thus, he was able to draw directly on stories and folk beliefs in the general population rather than being over reliant on written sources.
His Golden Legend represents one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. Ostensibly, it is a collection of saints’ hagiographies, structured around the Christian ritual year. It contains numerous miraculous tales, relating to the deeds of saints and martyrs. Amongst other things it contains the earliest known narrative of the tale of St George and the dragon.
Religion or Folklore?
One might be tempted to see de Voragine’s work purely as a religious exercise. His stories are saints’ hagiographies and various apocryphal tales from biblical times after all. He claims to have used a wide range of earlier written sources in compiling his work. However, whilst we know the names of many of these works, some of them have only survived in an incomplete form. It is therefore difficult to tell exactly where de Voragine got some of his information.
At least some (possibly a great many) of de Voragine’ stories seem to be taken from medieval oral folk tradition with no known written source. Indeed, it was this uncertain provenance that caused Christian thinkers of the Reformation to denounce de Voragine’s in favour of more rigorous hagiographical approaches.
Folklore in the Golden Legend
Many of de Voragine’s myths and legends might be considered folkloric in nature. And, in addition to folk tales, de Voragine occasionally recorded invaluable details of 13th century folkloric practice.
One example is de Voragine’s recording of midsummer bonfire customs. He provides us an intriguing folkloric explanation of these customs which, he claims, come “from antiquity”.
De Voragine observed that 13th century people frequently burnt animal bones on midsummer bonfires. This was done, they claimed, to create fumes that served to ward off plague bearing dragons. This may seem odd to the modern reader but, in medieval mythology, dragons were often depicted as poisonous or capable for spewing forth plague bearing fumes (indeed, St, George’s famous dragon was of this sort).
On one level this strange belief appears quite bizarre but, on another level, it makes perfect sense. Burning the remains of animal carcasses, rather than leaving them lying around to rot, would indeed reduce the risk of disease in summertime.
De Voragine the Folklorist
De Voragine reports on folklore only in so far as it relates to his primary concern – saints’ hagiographies. He would not have bothered discussing midsummer bonfires at all, had they not coincided with the Feast of Saint John. It was this coincidence that prompted de Voragine to ask why people lit bonfires at this time of year.
Ultimately de Voragine gives us no sense that he sees ‘folklore’ as a discrete topic worthy of study, even if his work is, arguably, packed full of it. His work is a religious work. However, it is a religious work in which the boundary between orthodox religion, apocryphal storytelling and folkloric belief is porous.
The Minstrels and Players
How were folk stories transmitted by ‘the folk’ in the Middle Ages? Leaving aside the clerical classes who recorded these stories in writing, how were these tales (and others) transmitted amongst the people?
Our modern age is an age in which transmission via modern media and the written word is the norm. It is hard to comprehend how stories were told in an age with no modern media, amongst illiterate folk who, in any case, had no real access to books.
One might assume that stories were transmitted orally by storytellers, perhaps sitting around a roaring fire in a cramped hovel. And that may well have happened. However, it was by no means the only way stories were spread. Indeed, it probably was not even the most important vector of storytelling.
For, in medieval times, storytelling was mainly an act of performance. The performance of minstrels, singing ballads and reciting rhymes at summer fairs. Or the performance of itinerant players troupes, putting on plays on the village green. Or perhaps, even, rustic junior clerics, putting on crude religious plays in the churchyard (much to the chagrin of disapproving bishops).
Robin Hood
The earliest tales of Robin Hood were of this kind. Ballads composed by minstrels to sing at summer games or county fairs. Or, in at least some cases, rustic plays performed on a village green.
These early stories were simple and often action packed. The one surviving recorded fragment of a 15th century play contains very little dialogue. It focuses mainly on the action – sword fights, wrestling contests, archery contests and the like. Action sequences designed to be performed outside in fine weather, where it would have been possible to attract a significant audience.
We know almost as much about these plays and rhymes from the disapproving clerics who wrote about them as we do from surviving recorded fragments. We know that they existed at least as early as 1377 (the first recorded reference to Robin Hood ballads). The elite literate classes generally regarded such material as frivolous and even as material to be disapproved of. Probably for this reason, only a limited amount of medieval material survives.
As to who recorded it and why, we can only guess. Originally this material existed only as a non-written performance art. It nevertheless represents what was probably the primary means by which storytelling occurred in medieval England.
William of Worcester
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, at the end of the 15th century, it is worth turning our attention to one final example of a medieval folklore collector. In this case, William of Worcester.
Unlike earlier collectors, William was not a cleric. He was the son of a leather worker and secretary to Sir John Falstaff (a famous soldier in the latter stages of the Hundred Years’ War).
In some ways, he is a good example of the growing level of literacy outside of the clerical class in the late Middle Ages. However, like many of the clerical writers we have encountered, he was not, first and foremost, a folklorist. One might better describe William as a late 15th century Bill Bryson – a writer of travel journals if you like.
One of William’s best-known works is his Itineraries, which is essentially a travel journal, detailing his trips around England in the late 15th century. As one might expect, this contains a lot of information on geography, descriptions of the places he visits and the people he meets. But it also contains occasional references to local folklore from the area concerned.
The Witch of Wookey Hole
One of William’s most important accounts deals with a visit he made to Wookey Hole in the early 1480s, near to the very end of the Middle Ages.
William tells us that medieval visitors to the caves were in the habit of addressing one of the more distinctive rocks near to the entrance. This rock was known to the locals as the Porter, and it was the accepted custom to ask the Porter’s permission before entering the caves. William goes on to describe the stalagmite now commonly referred to as the witch. However, he makes no mention of the witch. Instead, he describes it as an ordinary woman, spinning with her distaff. He goes on to tell us that a natural well, lying deep within the caves, was considered a holy well at this time.
Thus, at least at the end of the Middle Ages, thanks to William, we know that the caves were not associated with any witches at that time. The witch, in late medieval eyes, was still just an ordinary woman. There was nothing sinister or evil about the caves; indeed, they were known for containing a holy well.
The legend of the Witch of Wookey Hole is therefore not medieval in origin. It must have emerged at some time after William’s day, during the early modern age. It has its origins at some point in the 16th century; unsurprisingly, at around the same time as the early modern witch hunts were beginning to gain momentum.
The Medieval Folklorists
The medieval folklore collectors we’ve encountered demonstrate that many people prior to the Grimms or the early antiquarians were indeed recording and discussing folklore.
However, unlike the Grimms, medieval folklore collectors rarely singled out ‘folklore’ as a subject worthy of study. Often, we find that they studied folklore only as part of some wider endeavour (and sometimes only incidentally). If we consider the people we’ve encountered, laying aside the shared clerical training of many of them, they clearly represent a very diverse bunch:
- Geoffrey of Monmouth: a man attempting to shape a foundation myth.
- Walter Map: a court satirist.
- Gerald of Wales: Fortean by inclination.
- William of Newburgh: an historian.
- Gervase of Tilbury: a writer of speculum literature for an Imperial patron.
- Jacobus de Voragine: a saints’ hagiographer.
- The various recorders of the works of minstrels and players: whose motives (and identities) we can only guess at.
- William of Worcester: a late medieval Bill Bryson.
Despite diverse backgrounds, and although they fail to acknowledge folklore as a field worthy of independent study, we ignore their contribution at our peril.
Other Features on Medieval Myths, Legends and Folklore
Here are links to past features covering medieval myths, legends and folklore traditions, you might want to check out some of these stories:
Medieval Summer Folk Traditions
Myth and Folklore in Medieval England
Omens, Portents and Richard II
Robin Hood Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Saint George in Medieval England
Sea Monsters in the Middle Ages
The Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain
The Green Man: History and Origins
The Wild Hunt in Medieval Mythology
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Myths and Legends of the Medieval World
If you enjoyed reading this article, you might be interested in my book: Myths and Legends of the Medieval World.
References and Further Reading
De Voragine, J. (2012). The Golden Legend. Woodstock: Princeton University Press.
Gerald of Wales. (2020). The Topography of Ireland. Cambridge: In parenthesis Publications.
Lindahl, C. McNamara, J. & Lindow, J. (2002). Medieval Folklore. New York: Oxford University Press.
Map, W. (2022). De nugis curialium, translated by Sidney Hartland. Online: Internet Archive.
Monmouth, Geoffrey of. (1966). The History of the Kings of Britain. Penguin Classics: London.
Watts, P. (2024). Myths and Legends of the Medieval World. Bradford: Pen and Sword Books.
Westwood, J, and Simpson, J. (2006) The Lore of the Land. London: Penguin Books, London
Images
Cover Image: Gerald of Wales (BL_MS-1 Topographia Hibernica) by Ray Oakes 2021
Boys King Arthur – N.C. Wyeth (from Wiki Commons)
Werewolves of Ossory: Royal MS 13 B VIII – ff 1r-34v – Topographia Hiberniae – c1200 (via Wiki Commons)
Saint George and the Dragon: Bernat Martorell, 1435 (via Wiki Commons)
Witch of Wookey Hole – A Visit to the Witch 1882 Edward F Brewtnall (Wiki Commons)