FOLKLORE

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32957, 1 July 1972, Page 12

FOLKLORE

One of the lectures at the meeting of the British Association in 1971, which the 8.8. C. reported to its overseas listeners, was about modem folklore. The speaker, Mr A. M. Shearman of the University of Salford, has been analysing the kind of tales which quickly pass round—and which are usually quite untrue. These stories, Mr Shearman said, have these distinctive features:

They are told as true, with some introductory sentence such as: “I don’t know the man myself, but he works in the same shop as my friend who told me about it.”

They have a striking, even melodramatic theme.

They are decorated with

plausible details such as placenames.

They are sometimes closely bound up with social or

economic circumstances. They often contain themes of justice or retribution.

One of the most famous was probably that in World War I, about the Russians who passed through England, and could be identified by the snow on their boots. A recent one, quoted by Mr Shearman, was current in the pubs of Rochdale. It was said that a group of Irish labourers were being paid the fantastically high wage of £5 an hour to dig up a graveyard to make room for a motorway, but being devout Roman Catholics, had refused the work on religious grounds. There was no truth in it, but many people believed it.