John Roby | |
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 John Roby, from the 1872 edition of The Traditions of Lancashire | |
| Born | 5 January 1793 Haigh, Greater Manchester, England |
| Died | 18 June 1850 (aged 57) |
| Cause of death | Drowned |
| Occupation(s) | Banker, poet, writer |
| Parents |
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| Relatives | William Roby (half-brother) |
John Roby (5 January 1793 - 18 June 1850) was an English banker, poet, and writer.
Roby was born in Wigan, England in 1793, the son of Mary Aspull and a schoolmaster named Nehemiah Roby. [1] He began his career as a banker in Rochdale, Lancashire. In his work Lancashire Sketches , Edwin Waugh recalled that, while Roby was working for the firm of Fenton and Roby in Rochdale, Waugh worked as an apprentice at the bookshop next door.
For the clergy of the district, and for a certain class of politicians, this shop was the chief rendezvous of the place. Roby used to slip in at evening, to have a chat with my employer [Thomas Holden], and a knot of congenial spirits who met him there. In the days when my head was yet but a little way higher than the counter, I remember how I used to listen to his versatile conversations. [2]
Roby died in a shipwreck in June 1850. Despite clear weather, the S. S. Orion struck rocky bottom at Portpatrick en route from Liverpool to Glasgow. [3] Folklorist Simon Young has called Roby "the most important figure in the first phase of Lancashire folklore writing", [4] but also "the despised father of Lancashire folklore". [5]
Roby wrote an influential, two-volume study on English folklore, The Traditions of Lancashire , in 1829. The book was a hit with the British upper classes, and it was reprinted within a year. Roby published a second series in 1831. Francis Palgrave thanked Roby for the work and asked him to write more. Nevertheless, readers did not believe that a banker could have written the books, and speculation named several others as the real author, including Crofton Croker who included, though, one plagiarised story in the collection. [6] The works were condensed into three volumes and republished in 1841 for the general public as Popular Traditions of Lancashire. [7] Roby wrote in the introduction that he intended to continue with volumes on other popular English traditions, but he never followed up on the promise. Different versions of The Traditions of Lancashire were reprinted in 1906, 1911, 1928, and 1930. [8] He taught a four-session course on "Tradition, as connected with, and illustrating history, antiquities, and Romance" in his hometown of Rochdale. [9]
In some respects, Roby's efforts presaged later work in folkloristics. He used the term "oral tradition" long before it came into common academic usage. He noticed and wrote about similarities between folk beliefs in different regions in different eras. [9] Roby denied any authority as a folklorist (antiquarian) and instead called himself simply a collector of oral traditions:
In the northern counties, and more particularly in Lancashire ... it may readily be imagined that a number of interesting legends, anecdotes, and scraps of family history, are floating about, hitherto preserved chiefly in the shape of oral tradition. The antiquary, in most instances, rejects the information that does not present itself in the form of an authentic and well-attested fact; and legendary lore, in particular, he throws aside, as worthless and unprofitable. The author of the 'Traditions of Lancashire,' in leaving the dry and heraldic pedigree which unfortunately constitute the great bulk of those works that bear the name of county histories, enters on the more entertaining, though sometimes apocryphal narratives, which exemplify and embellish the records of our forefathers. A native of Lancashire, and residing there during the greater part of his life, he has been enabled to collect a mass of local traditions, now fast-dying from the memories of the inhabitants. It is his object to perpetuate these interesting relics of the past, and to present them in a form that may be generally acceptable, divested of the dust and dross in which the originals are but too often disfigured, so as to appear worthless and uninviting. [10]
Nevertheless, as folklore studies advanced, his work came to be viewed as untrustworthy. Roby seems to have been ignorant of the works of English antiquaries who were developing the field at the time. Instead, he sided with the Romanticists and saw folklore as faulty and lowly, the blemished utterances of peasants, which needed a more advanced hand to render in its full beauty. His technique was to collect folk stories and rewrite them into coherent tales in a more refined style. He used a copy of the Encyclopedia of Antiquities by Thomas Dudley Fosbroke (1825) to check details of "costume and furnishings". For example, when he was trying to write the tale of a boggart rumoured to haunt the area of Clegg Hall northeast of Rochdale, he found the tales of the locals too mutually irreconcilable to weave into a coherent whole. [9] In the end, Roby took the only kernel of continuity—a jealous uncle who threw his two nephews into a moat to steal their inheritance in the 13th or 14th century and the subsequent haunting of the hall—and spun it into a 50-page work of fancy. Still, Roby's works were celebrated in their time, and later folklorists referred to them until the 1870s when new works on Lancashire legends superseded them. [11] Folklorist William E. A. Axon wrote in 1899 of the caution with which Roby's works had come to be viewed: "The late Mr. John Roby, whose 'Traditions of Lancashire' first appeared in 1829, was a diligent collector of local legends, but his object was purely literary, and accordingly his book must be used cautiously, though it certainly contains important data." [12] Katharine Briggs noted, instead: "the narratives [of Roby] have been so much adorned that it is almost impossible to find out what happened". [13]
After his death, Roby's wife published his unfinished works and biography as The Legendary and Poetical Remains of John Roby , despite the fact that his life was "so private it afforded but few materials". [14]
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as tales, myths, legends, proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, including folk religion, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas, weddings, folk dances, and initiation rites.
A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants, may include miracles. Legends may be transformed over time to keep them fresh and vital.
A boggart is a supernatural being from English folklore. The dialectologist Elizabeth Wright described the boggart as 'a generic name for an apparition'; folklorist Simon Young defines it as 'any ambivalent or evil solitary supernatural spirit'. Halifax folklorist Kai Roberts states that boggart ‘might have been used to refer to anything from a hilltop hobgoblin to a household faerie, from a headless apparition to a proto-typical poltergeist’. As these wide definitions suggest boggarts are to be found both in and out of doors, as a household spirit, or a malevolent spirit defined by local geography, a genius loci inhabiting topographical features. The 1867 book Lancashire Folklore by Harland and Wilkinson, makes a distinction between "House boggarts" and other types. Typical descriptions show boggarts to be malevolent. It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their faces. Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them. The household boggart may follow a family wherever they flee. One Lancashire source reports the belief that a boggart should never be named: if the boggart was given a name, it could neither be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive.
Folklore studies is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. It became established as a field across both Europe and North America, coordinating with Volkskunde (German), folkeminner (Norwegian), and folkminnen (Swedish), among others.
Irish folklore refers to the folktales, balladry, music, dance and mythology of Ireland. It is the study and appreciation of how people lived.
Thomas Crofton Croker was an Irish antiquary, best known for his Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825–1828), and who also showed considerable interest in Irish song and music.
Edwin Waugh (1817–1890) was an English poet.
Lancashire, like all other counties of England, has historically had its own peculiar superstitions, manners, and customs, which may or may not find parallels in those of other localities.
Katharine Mary Briggs was a British folklorist and writer, who wrote The Anatomy of Puck, the four-volume A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, and various other books on fairies and folklore. From 1969 to 1972, she was president of the Folklore Society, which established an award in her name to commemorate her life and work.
Richard Mercer Dorson was an American folklorist, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. Dorson has been called the "father of American folklore" and "the dominant force in the study of folklore".
Stith Thompson was an American folklorist: he has been described as "America's most important folklorist".
The Lancashire dialect refers to the Northern English vernacular speech of the English county of Lancashire. The region is notable for its tradition of poetry written in the dialect.
A brownie or broonie (Scots), also known as a brùnaidh or gruagach, is a household spirit or hobgoblin from Scottish folklore that is said to come out at night while the owners of the house are asleep and perform various chores and farming tasks. The human owners of the house must leave a bowl of milk or cream or some other offering for the brownie, usually by the hearth. Brownies are described as easily offended and will leave their homes forever if they feel they have been insulted or in any way taken advantage of. Brownies are characteristically mischievous and are often said to punish or pull pranks on lazy servants. If angered, they are sometimes said to turn malicious, like boggarts.
William Edward Armytage Axon was an English librarian, antiquary and journalist for the Manchester Guardian. He contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography under his initials W. E. A. A. He was also a notable vegetarianism activist.
Dan Ben-Amos was an Israeli-American folklorist and academic who worked as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he held the Graduate Program Chair for the Department of Folklore and Folklife.
Invented traditions are cultural practices that are presented or perceived as traditional, arising from people starting in the distant past, but which are relatively recent and often consciously invented by historical actors. The concept was highlighted in the 1983 book The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Hobsbawm's introduction argues that many "traditions" which "appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented." This "invention" is distinguished from "starting" or "initiating" a tradition that does not then claim to be old. The phenomenon is particularly clear in the modern development of the nation and of nationalism, creating a national identity promoting national unity, and legitimising certain institutions or cultural practices.
John Gregorson Campbell was a Scottish folklorist and Free Church minister at the Tiree and Coll parishes in Argyll, Scotland. An avid collector of traditional stories, he became Secretary to the Ossianic Society of Glasgow University in the mid-1850s. Ill health had prevented him taking up employment as a Minister when he was initially approved to preach by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1858 and later after he was appointed to Tiree by the Duke of Argyll in 1861, parishioners objected to his manner of preaching.
Carl "Charles" Roeder was a German-born British amateur archaeologist, antiquarian, folklorist, philologist, and naturalist, who published his work under the name "Charles Roeder".
Margaret Rebecca Lahee was an Irish popular Lancashire dialect writer from the 19th century.
British Goblins: Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions is an 1880 book on Welsh folklore and mythology by American journalist Wirt Sikes.
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