New Year's Eve, newts and Nessie: a history of British folklore
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Today, the 31st of December, marks the end of the year for much of the world, a time of merriment, retrospection, and looking to the future. It's also one of many days bound up in its own set of folklore and traditions, which vary significantly even around the UK. In today's episode of the History Extra podcast, I'm joined by Kerry Holbrook and Owen Davies, co-authors of a new book on British folklore, to explore some of the nation's folkloric traditions and why we should consider ghost stories just as much a part of those traditions as goblins and Guy Forks. I kicked off by asking the two authors to introduce themselves. I'm Dr.
Kerry Holbrook and I am senior lecturer in folklore and history at the University of Hertfordshire and programme lead for the MA Folklore Studies. And I'm Owen Davies. I'm Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire and we co-founded the MA and Folklore Studies with Kerry. Thank you so much both for being with us today. We are obviously talking in an episode on New Year's Eve on the 31st of December, which
in itself is an interesting moment to be thinking about folklore and thinking about some of the currents of this subject. Are there any aspects of this particular folkloric day in the calendar that you think help illustrate the wider themes we're going to be talking about? Yeah, I mean so there are so many different customs that happen from New Year's Eve. And I guess the interesting thing is that there are different regionally, so different regions across Britain have their own customs, or the same custom has really interesting regional variations, and these customs have changed over time.
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