Folklore Tapes at the Arnolfini, Bristol, September 12th

Tomorrow, at the Arnolfini in Bristol, Folklore Tapes present a full evening of acts, including a one-off performance focusing on the stone circle at Stanton Drew, as well as spectral projections, tape manipulations, storytelling and light puppetry.

Folklore Tapes at Port Eliot Festival 30th July - 2nd August

Black Dog Field Notes

Ian Humberstone navigates Troller's Gill in the Yorkshire Dales. This limestone gorge is said to be the spot where a wizard met his maker at the muzzle of a barguest. The tradition is long-standing in the district, and commemorated by a ballad dating to the early nineteenth century.

The Wambarrows on Winsford Hill in Somerset. These ancient tumuli are rumoured to conceal a hidden treasure, which is guarded by a ghostly black dog. The phantom is said to appear on autumn nights, its saucer eyes glowering in the gloom. Approach it and death will follow, stand motionless and the vision will slowly fade away into the moorland mists.

Arianne Churchman's notebook, laid out on a table at the Locks Inn, Geldeston. In the nineteenth century, a 'Hateful Thing' in the form of a black dog, but keeping no regular shape or size, appeared near here to a mother and daughter. The daughter took great fright at the apparition, but the mother at first saw nothing - it was only on touching her daughter's hand that the creature revealed itself to them both. Great significance was placed upon the fact that the daughter was born 'under the chime hours' and could therefore see things others couldn't.

David Chatton Barker takes a break at Black Dog village in Devon. A black dog was said to haunt the well here at the time of the Civil War. More recently, a procession, involving guisers decked out in a black dog costume, was set up in the 1990s to honour similar reports of 'a beast' seen along the local roads.

The black dog weather vane in Bungay, Suffolk. On the fourth of August, 1577, a great tempest occurred here during divine service at St. Mary's church. A contemporary pamphlet records that in the midst of the storm a black dog, or 'the devil in such a likenesse', ran about the church assaulting the parishioners. Several are said to have been slain by the creature, which caused one man to shrivel up like a piece of leather 'scorched in a hot fire'. The Black Dog of Bungay has since become a local emblem.

The interior of Dob Park Lodge, an austere Tudor ruin overlooking the Washburn Valley near Harrogate. Legend tells us that in the foundations of this old manor there are a number of hidden passageways and chambers. It is said that deep down within the subterranean lair there lives a talking barguest that guards a chest of gold from any foolhardy enough to seek it.

Merry May: 'Minehead Hobby Horse' Research Notes

 

The Minehead Hobby Horse: An Awakening - Becoming Horse/Boat/Myth - Horseplay

 

Warning Night, An Awakening:

The horse is awoken; the rider begins their process of becoming animal, their body assimilated into the horses.

May Day, Becoming Horse/Boat/Myth:

Beginning at 5am the awoken horse perambulates the old borders of the town, processing from the Quay to Whitecross and then to Dunster Castle. The act of boundary marking reinforces an insular space in which non-human becomings can occur and the myths shared by the community can be invoked. This is particularly evident in the strange shaping of the horse, though technically a horse it is also unmistakably boat shaped, a shape that invokes the myth of an unmanned ghostly ship entering the harbour and another myth of Viking invaders being chased back into their boats by the town’s populace dressed as this strange beast. The horse through its becoming other acts as the representative of the community and its shared history.

The Bootie, Horseplay:

The assimilation of the rider leads to “horseplay” and chaos, which is particularly evident during the Bootie at Cher. A spectator is caught by two members of the Hobby Horse team, and is booted ten times. The spectator then has to avoid the whipping of the horses tail afterwards in a dance.

“There is a becoming-animal not content to proceed by resemblance and for which resemblance, on the contrary, would represent an obstacle or stoppage”, Deleuze and Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus, 1988).

- Arianne Churchman
http://ariannechurchman.tumblr.com/

Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs Vol.II: Merry May

Title: Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs Vol.II: Merry May
Artists: Various
Format: Embossed cassette box including screen printed cassette sleeve, research booklet, essay, maypole ribbon, download code.
Release Date: 01/05/15
Edition: 250
Estimated shipping: 24/4/15

Side A: Carl Turney & Brian Campbell – SumerIsIcumenIn ; The Blue Funz - Beltane, Isle of Mull: Need-Fire and Milking Cows Through Cake ; Arianne Churchman - Minehead Hobby Horse ; Rob St John - Bringing in the May. Side B: Ian Humberstone - The Hunting of the Earl of Rone ; Mary & David - Wish Before Sunrise (May Dewing) ; Children of Alice - Rite of the Maypole: An Unruly Procession ; Sam McLoughlin - I Want to Sing like the Birds Sing, Not Worrying About Who Hears or What They Think ; Malcolm Benzie - Hawthorne

Unite and unite and let us all unite,
For summer is a-come unto day
And whither we are going we will all unite,
In the merry morning of May.

May Day is one of the turning points of the year, when the transformation from winter to spring is ritually observed and celebrated. The Eve of May displays an obverse face to Halloween’s soot-blackened mask, fixed on the opposite arc of the annular globe. Both have origins in the Celtic pastoral year and the solar festivals which lent it formal division. Superstitions surrounding May Eve, May Day and the ensuing days at the start of the month persisted well into the medieval period, and even into the post-Reformation era. Fairies might steal or sour milk, or witches spell maleficent harm on the herd.

May Day festivities are all about getting outdoors and inhaling the first breath of summer; throwing the windows wide and heading for the woodlands and meadows with a light skip in the step. The custom most widely associated with May Day is the bringing in of the May. Boughs of blossoming hawthorn would be cut and brought back from meadow’s edge and strewn about town or village, some woven into garlands, others left as they were found. Maypoles were erected in villages, towns and cities. These towering columns would be painted with colourful stripes and hung about with ribbons and flowers. They became the focal point for local festivities, for dancing, whether in a wheeling, handlocked circle or weaving approaches and evasions. Morris dancing featured frequently, and there might be pipers and harpers, drummers and Fools to fuel the festivities with music and general jollity. Mummers plays were sometimes staged, the performers disguised, which gave them a certain license to mock the high and mighty. Parades were peopled by stock figures of British folklore, religious devotion and popular legend: George and the Dragon, regional saints, Jack-in-the-Greens, Giants and Devils.

‘Merry May’ explores this world of Spring carousing sonically, with contemporary music and sound informed by specific age-old traditions. The artists contributing to this compilation have each researched a particular May ritual and, informed by their findings, conjured a piece in response. As such, the cassette takes its listeners on an audiological journey where, mounted upon clacking Hobby horses, they will meet with May Birchers and Dewers, reel around Maypoles and parade the streets in the company of the Earl of Rone and the Fool.

Now available to pre-order from http://folkloretapes.co.uk

Upcoming Project Announcement: Black Dog Traditions of England

Black Dog Traditions of England 
Ian Humberstone and David Chatton Barker

Folklore is a kingdom unto itself, a world in which the past and the present, fact and fiction merge as one. The creatures that inhabit this wild and unkempt land are legion, the workings of many imaginations, with forms and powers cut roughly by the fireside and alehouse gossips of ages past. Our forthcoming series ‘Occultural Creatures’ presents these preternatural pests in the style of a radio ballad, with interviews, stories, acousmatic music and geographically informed sound-divination. Each edition will be housed in a presentation box containing an LP, book, map and short experimental film. We begin with ‘Black Dog Traditions of England.’

And a dreadful thing from the cliff did spring,

And its wild bark thill’d around—

Its eyes had the glow of the fires below—

‘Twas the form of the Spectre Hound!

Many and varied are the tales told of the black dog. To some it is a lane-haunting spectre whose appearance precedes a death, to others, the spirit guardian of thresholds or hidden treasures. Elsewhere still, it is none but a devil loosed of its chain, working evil in the realm of men. Yet wherever we catch a glimpse of this hound’s shadowy form, it is described in similar terms - as a dark entity in the shape of a great dog, with shaggy mane and tea-saucer eyes burning bright as hellfire.

Shuck, Shock, Skriker, Padfoot, Trash, Gytrash, Barguest, Hooter: there are many regional variations on the motif, each with their own traditions and stories. These four-footed beasts of the witching hour have kennelled themselves in the dimmer corners of our imaginations for centuries; how long, exactly, is a matter of debate.

Folklore Tapes’ Ian Humberstone has been researching these legends for more years than he cares to remember. Joined by David Chatton Barker, this study is being translated into an audio-visual format for Folklore Tapes. The pair are now wending their way about the country, collecting stories and field recordings from those places the hound has poked its fiery maw.

Work in progress. Expected autumn, 2015.

Wizard's Will Promotional Copy at The Wizard's Well

Hidden behind the Wizard's Well can be found a promo copy of the Wizard's Will Flexi Audio Book

OS Grid Reference - SJ 858 778