Teaching Documents by Chris Woodyard
Fairy Investigation Society Newsletter 20, New Series, Jun 2024, 2024
The authors explore the scholarly work of Marie Campbell, an American folklorist who dedicated he... more The authors explore the scholarly work of Marie Campbell, an American folklorist who dedicated her career to documenting Appalachian folklore. It highlights Campbell’s methods and the skepticism surrounding her folklore compilations. The piece also discusses Campbell's broader academic mission, including her significant yet incomplete projects on supernatural tales and fairylore. The authors are particularly interested in Appalachian fairy traditions and a lost manuscript detailing these traditions.
Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a fairy somewhere that falls down d... more Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. -J.M. Barrie- The very idea of a fairy funeral raises some important theological questions: Are fairies immortal? What religion do they follow? Do they have souls? The sheer quantity of fairy funerals reported suggests that not all fairies live forever, although there is controversy on that point from fairy pundits. Yeats, for example asked, "Do they die? Blake saw a fairy's funeral; but in Ireland we say they are immortal." i "Blake" is, of course, the artist William Blake, (1757-1827), who famously asked the lady seated next to him, "Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" "Never, Sir!" she replied. 'I have,' said Blake, 'but not before last night. I was walking alone in my garden, there was great stillness among the branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air; I heard a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of the size and colour of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a fairy funeral.'" ii Blake's account was quoted ad nauseam in newspapers, magazines, and books, and it set the standard for the true fairy funeral in which a wee Fae corpse -invariably female--is buried.
Source File for Pennsylvania's Women in Black, 2021
Drafts by Chris Woodyard
They stare, wide-eyed, up at us from their coffins, mounted on transparent biers at the National ... more They stare, wide-eyed, up at us from their coffins, mounted on transparent biers at the National Museum of Scotland. They are shockingly small—photographs make them seem Barbie®-sized or even larger. But they are Tinkerbell tiny and, indeed, some of the first reports of these mysterious artifacts referred to them as “fairy burials.”
These objects are the eight surviving miniature coffins and their doll-corpses, out of the seventeen discovered in a slate-shielded cavity on Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, in 1836.
This essay will attempt to sum up some of the known facts and collect the many different theories about what purpose these unique objects might have served.
Do You Feel Lucky?: A Source File on Luck, Lucky Charms, and Mascots, 2023
This file has been prepared for a number of the Boggart and Banshee podcast with Chris Woodyard a... more This file has been prepared for a number of the Boggart and Banshee podcast with Chris Woodyard and Simon Young due out 1 January 2023. While there have been charms and amulets since time immemorial, it is rather surprising to find a huge resurgence of 'superstition' in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These superstitions about luck--good and bad--come from a time when superstition was officially dead, said to have been eradicated by education and electricity. We find all sorts of survivals of ancient lucky charms, mascots, and ideas about hoodoos and jinxes, particularly associated with novel technology like airplanes, railways, modern building techniques, and automobiles. New technologies always inspire social anxiety, but it is possible that the Great/Long Depression, which began in the 1870s and ended in the 1890s, was at least partially responsible for the interest in superstitions, which seemed to engross journalists. The journalists who wrote about charms and mascots were not professional folklorists, but popular sources such as newspapers and magazines can be an invaluable source of the ephemera of history, preserving fads and folklore that perhaps were not captured elsewhere. This document will provide some late 19th century and early 20th century primary sources referencing luck: both good and bad, mascots, charms, hoodoos and talismans in the English-speaking world.
The very idea of a fairy funeral raises some important theological questions: Are fairies immorta... more The very idea of a fairy funeral raises some important theological questions: Are fairies immortal? What religion do they follow? Do they have souls? The sheer quantity of fairy funerals reported suggests that not all fairies live forever, although there is controversy on that point from fairy pundits. Yeats, for example asked, “Do they die? Blake saw a fairy’s funeral; but in Ireland we say they are immortal.”
This paper discusses the theme of fairy funerals in folklore and, briefly, in literature. There is considerable overlap and confusion over "fairy funerals," "phantom funerals," and "goblin funerals;" this paper will attempt to define some of the characteristics of each, as well as their usual function as a token of death. The final theme of the paper is the differences between fairy funerals in memorate and literary accounts.
Source File on Death Omens, 2022
As Victorian death rituals grew more elaborate, the idea of dying well shifted to an anomalous an... more As Victorian death rituals grew more elaborate, the idea of dying well shifted to an anomalous and obsessive interest in harbingers, portents, and tokens of death. The Civil War, with its unprecedented scale of casualties and a certain fatalism--the minie ball with one’s name on it--may have encouraged this necrological attentiveness. Omens of death could be anything from a prophetic dream, a vision of a phantom funeral, the sound of a spectral coffin-maker, the apparition of a Woman in White, mysterious lights, or the banshee’s wail or knock.
Stories of ‘tokens of death,’ as they were sometimes called, were collected by folklorists as evidence of popular ‘superstition’ and eagerly reported in the newspapers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This source file includes articles on omens arranged by topic: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Funereal, Clocks, Lights, Textile, Aural, Miscellaneous, and Collections. In addition to books and articles, the bibliography contains a number of blog posts on a variety of tokens of death, primarily from the United States and the United Kingdom.
In 1871, the Hoffman family in Wooster, Ohio were attacked by a mysterious entity they called “IT... more In 1871, the Hoffman family in Wooster, Ohio were attacked by a mysterious entity they called “IT,” which, in addition to the usual poltergeist tricks of knockings and throwing items, cut up clothing, sometimes while still on the wearer. Witchcraft, ghosts, and Spiritualist mediumship were all suggested as explanations in the United States newspapers which covered the events extensively. This source file includes many of those articles, in chronological order, covering the events of 1871 and, in an appendix, gives parallel instances of clothes-slashing entities.
Papers by Chris Woodyard
Ilkley Fairylore and Witchcraft by Chris Woodyard
One midsummer’s morning, c. 1820, William Butterfield opened the door to the Wells, a healing spr... more One midsummer’s morning, c. 1820, William Butterfield opened the door to the Wells, a healing spring on the edge of Ilkley Moor. He was startled to find a band of little creatures dressed in green from head to foot, who were noisily disporting themselves in the water. As he watched, they scurried over the eight-foot-high wall, and disappeared. Is there any way to determine exactly what William Butterfield saw that morning? Were they insects, lizards, or, as William believed, fairies? Simon and Chris investigate.
Books by Chris Woodyard
The Cottingley Fairy Photographs: New Approaches to Fairies, Fakes and Folklore, 2024
There are fashions, even in the paranormal. Headless horsemen
and boggarts are passé. The regal, ... more There are fashions, even in the paranormal. Headless horsemen
and boggarts are passé. The regal, wingless Sidhe have been superseded
by tiny, winged Tinkerbells. Our visions of the paranormal
are inseparable from popular culture, whether influenced overtly
or subliminally by that culture. We see the paranormal that we expect
to see. This chapter will analyze the fashions depicted in the Cottingley fairy photographs and discuss some of the artistic and fashionable influences circulating in the world of Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright.
Conference Presentations by Chris Woodyard
While Victorian literary humor has been extensively studied, a topic, perhaps deliberately overl... more While Victorian literary humor has been extensively studied, a topic, perhaps deliberately overlooked, given its heartlessness, is the humor surrounding death found in nineteenth-century newspapers in the United States. Jokes about widows, suicide, execution, disease, violent death, undertakers, disasters, and murder were commonplace. Jokes that today would be considered inappropriate, given their painful subjects, were widely syndicated and reprinted by newspapers at home and abroad.
There remains a public perception that the Victorians on both sides of the Atlantic were a humorless lot. It is hard to reconcile the well-mannered façade we associate with the Victorians with the gallows humor seemingly relished by newspapers in the United States.
This paper will examine the dark side of American newspaper humor, with special emphasis on a unique type of joke in which a dire situation is claimed to be moderated by oblique phrasing and non-sequiturs. It will also discuss the social assumptions that informed particular genres, such as widow jokes and undertaker jokes.
With the rise of digitized newspapers and journals, the comedy of the past is more accessible than ever. Yet, while the cold-blooded strain of humor that runs through the popular press may now be located with some caveats and challenges, the real impediment may be whether scholars find this grim category of humor deserving of study.
There also is a prejudice against using nineteenth-century newspapers as a reliable source of social commentary since the press in the United States had a reputation for fabricated stories, often presented as factual news. In studying the many topics of Victorian death, it is important to verify social tropes found in newspapers using other digitized and print primary sources. These show a surprising consistency in nineteenth-century funereal jokes, apparently arising from widely held frames of reference about death and mourning.
Biography: Chris Woodyard is an Ohio-based writer and historian of death and supernatural folklore. Among other books and articles, she is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, on the basics of mourning traditions and artifacts, and The Victorian Book of the Dead, on the material culture of Victorian mourning and death. She has given presentations on topics such as shroud-making, mourning myths, and children’s mourning to organizations including The Costume Society of America, an organization for museum and fashion industry professionals, the Sartorial Society Series, and the Royal Holloway University of London Death Conference. Her research interests center on the ephemera of dress, mourning material culture, burial clothing, and tokens of death.
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Teaching Documents by Chris Woodyard
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Starting in the 1880s, mysterious figures dressed like Victorian widows began flitting around in the dark terrorizing communities across the United States. They were usually described as unnaturally tall, thin, and veiled in black and they were particularly active in the coal-mining areas of Pennsylvania. The newspapers, as they did with ghost panics, fanned the flames of sensation, as we will see by these articles.
Drafts by Chris Woodyard
These objects are the eight surviving miniature coffins and their doll-corpses, out of the seventeen discovered in a slate-shielded cavity on Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, in 1836.
This essay will attempt to sum up some of the known facts and collect the many different theories about what purpose these unique objects might have served.
This paper discusses the theme of fairy funerals in folklore and, briefly, in literature. There is considerable overlap and confusion over "fairy funerals," "phantom funerals," and "goblin funerals;" this paper will attempt to define some of the characteristics of each, as well as their usual function as a token of death. The final theme of the paper is the differences between fairy funerals in memorate and literary accounts.
Stories of ‘tokens of death,’ as they were sometimes called, were collected by folklorists as evidence of popular ‘superstition’ and eagerly reported in the newspapers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This source file includes articles on omens arranged by topic: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Funereal, Clocks, Lights, Textile, Aural, Miscellaneous, and Collections. In addition to books and articles, the bibliography contains a number of blog posts on a variety of tokens of death, primarily from the United States and the United Kingdom.
Papers by Chris Woodyard
Ilkley Fairylore and Witchcraft by Chris Woodyard
Books by Chris Woodyard
and boggarts are passé. The regal, wingless Sidhe have been superseded
by tiny, winged Tinkerbells. Our visions of the paranormal
are inseparable from popular culture, whether influenced overtly
or subliminally by that culture. We see the paranormal that we expect
to see. This chapter will analyze the fashions depicted in the Cottingley fairy photographs and discuss some of the artistic and fashionable influences circulating in the world of Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright.
Conference Presentations by Chris Woodyard
There remains a public perception that the Victorians on both sides of the Atlantic were a humorless lot. It is hard to reconcile the well-mannered façade we associate with the Victorians with the gallows humor seemingly relished by newspapers in the United States.
This paper will examine the dark side of American newspaper humor, with special emphasis on a unique type of joke in which a dire situation is claimed to be moderated by oblique phrasing and non-sequiturs. It will also discuss the social assumptions that informed particular genres, such as widow jokes and undertaker jokes.
With the rise of digitized newspapers and journals, the comedy of the past is more accessible than ever. Yet, while the cold-blooded strain of humor that runs through the popular press may now be located with some caveats and challenges, the real impediment may be whether scholars find this grim category of humor deserving of study.
There also is a prejudice against using nineteenth-century newspapers as a reliable source of social commentary since the press in the United States had a reputation for fabricated stories, often presented as factual news. In studying the many topics of Victorian death, it is important to verify social tropes found in newspapers using other digitized and print primary sources. These show a surprising consistency in nineteenth-century funereal jokes, apparently arising from widely held frames of reference about death and mourning.
Biography: Chris Woodyard is an Ohio-based writer and historian of death and supernatural folklore. Among other books and articles, she is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, on the basics of mourning traditions and artifacts, and The Victorian Book of the Dead, on the material culture of Victorian mourning and death. She has given presentations on topics such as shroud-making, mourning myths, and children’s mourning to organizations including The Costume Society of America, an organization for museum and fashion industry professionals, the Sartorial Society Series, and the Royal Holloway University of London Death Conference. Her research interests center on the ephemera of dress, mourning material culture, burial clothing, and tokens of death.
http://www.strangehistory.net/podcast/
Starting in the 1880s, mysterious figures dressed like Victorian widows began flitting around in the dark terrorizing communities across the United States. They were usually described as unnaturally tall, thin, and veiled in black and they were particularly active in the coal-mining areas of Pennsylvania. The newspapers, as they did with ghost panics, fanned the flames of sensation, as we will see by these articles.
These objects are the eight surviving miniature coffins and their doll-corpses, out of the seventeen discovered in a slate-shielded cavity on Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, in 1836.
This essay will attempt to sum up some of the known facts and collect the many different theories about what purpose these unique objects might have served.
This paper discusses the theme of fairy funerals in folklore and, briefly, in literature. There is considerable overlap and confusion over "fairy funerals," "phantom funerals," and "goblin funerals;" this paper will attempt to define some of the characteristics of each, as well as their usual function as a token of death. The final theme of the paper is the differences between fairy funerals in memorate and literary accounts.
Stories of ‘tokens of death,’ as they were sometimes called, were collected by folklorists as evidence of popular ‘superstition’ and eagerly reported in the newspapers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This source file includes articles on omens arranged by topic: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Funereal, Clocks, Lights, Textile, Aural, Miscellaneous, and Collections. In addition to books and articles, the bibliography contains a number of blog posts on a variety of tokens of death, primarily from the United States and the United Kingdom.
and boggarts are passé. The regal, wingless Sidhe have been superseded
by tiny, winged Tinkerbells. Our visions of the paranormal
are inseparable from popular culture, whether influenced overtly
or subliminally by that culture. We see the paranormal that we expect
to see. This chapter will analyze the fashions depicted in the Cottingley fairy photographs and discuss some of the artistic and fashionable influences circulating in the world of Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright.
There remains a public perception that the Victorians on both sides of the Atlantic were a humorless lot. It is hard to reconcile the well-mannered façade we associate with the Victorians with the gallows humor seemingly relished by newspapers in the United States.
This paper will examine the dark side of American newspaper humor, with special emphasis on a unique type of joke in which a dire situation is claimed to be moderated by oblique phrasing and non-sequiturs. It will also discuss the social assumptions that informed particular genres, such as widow jokes and undertaker jokes.
With the rise of digitized newspapers and journals, the comedy of the past is more accessible than ever. Yet, while the cold-blooded strain of humor that runs through the popular press may now be located with some caveats and challenges, the real impediment may be whether scholars find this grim category of humor deserving of study.
There also is a prejudice against using nineteenth-century newspapers as a reliable source of social commentary since the press in the United States had a reputation for fabricated stories, often presented as factual news. In studying the many topics of Victorian death, it is important to verify social tropes found in newspapers using other digitized and print primary sources. These show a surprising consistency in nineteenth-century funereal jokes, apparently arising from widely held frames of reference about death and mourning.
Biography: Chris Woodyard is an Ohio-based writer and historian of death and supernatural folklore. Among other books and articles, she is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, on the basics of mourning traditions and artifacts, and The Victorian Book of the Dead, on the material culture of Victorian mourning and death. She has given presentations on topics such as shroud-making, mourning myths, and children’s mourning to organizations including The Costume Society of America, an organization for museum and fashion industry professionals, the Sartorial Society Series, and the Royal Holloway University of London Death Conference. Her research interests center on the ephemera of dress, mourning material culture, burial clothing, and tokens of death.