Paper short abstract:

Ella Mary Leather (1874-1928) brought together some 220 folklore records associated with 105 places in Herefordshire county. A participatory textile project is exploring the contemporary resonance of her gathered folklore of the River Lugg and its environs which is currently under ecological threat.

Paper long abstract:

Ella Mary Leather collected folklore in the sparsely populated rural county of Herefordshire at the time of Britain’s First Folk Revival. She noted the persistence of the ‘primitive idea of sympathy and affinity between humanity and the plant and animal world’ (Leather, 1904) and remedied the lack of a systematic record of old country customs. She coaxed tales, cures, sayings, songs, dances and tunes from her community. Her approach was scientific, recording contributors, places, and cross referencing her findings with other published records.

This paper firstly examines her record of places where nature and culture coincide as detailed in her main publication (Leather,1912). There are 105 villages or towns associated with 220 folklore records, excluding her extensive collection of songs and dances (King, 2010). Place details vary from the specific such as a well, a tree, a village, to a larger feature such as a hill, wood, or river.

A community participatory textile project is underway to retell stories of the River Lugg, utilising both Leather’s gathered folklore of it and its environs and a contemporary commemorative practice. In 1461 a battle was fought on its banks where some 4000 soldiers died, and today on its anniversary the local mill owner throws a few snowdrops into the river. The river is currently under great threat from nitrate and phosphate pollution. Leather hoped that her work would be ‘of some practical use to the comparative folklorist’ (Leather, 1912: xii.); utilised in this way her work may be future forming.