Folklore In Dark Places

On the day I toured Luss and Rossdhu House in Scotland, I also toured the grounds of the Bannachra Estate, which has historical ties to Clan Colquhoun and is presently being renovated into a twenty-first century educational facility complete with solar panels, water collection, gardens, and other sustainability features. I met Dr. Liz Barrett and her husband Rob Lenihan, owners of the estate, and it was Rob who took me on the tour. At one point, he showed me a deep ravine along the edge of the acreage and said that historically, this was the place Clan Colquhoun threw women accused of witchcraft. I was horrified. I wanted to walk to the edge and place myself in the shoes of women whose bodies might still be lying on the ravine floor, even as I recognized the narrative for what it was, a local legend.

In the absence of documentation - which my sources in Scotland have not been able to locate - who knows how much of that legend might be true? There might be elements of truth in it; a lot of women in Scotland were murdered as witches in a lot of awful ways. But as I sat with the legend afterwards, I wondered how to best approach it as a folklore scholar. What would I foreground, and where would my own horror land in the scholarship? It's a common concern in my discipline; navigating the study of dark folklore in ways that illuminate and educate. Given the abundance of social media posts about folklore that encourage a passive, backward gaze at crumbling books and country life, I thought it might be worth discussing that concern. How do folklorists walk in dark places, when all other lights have gone out?

It's worth noting here that Folklore is a sub-discipline of Anthropology. A trained academic folklorist is also an ethnographer, able to conduct primary research among people and document their intangible cultural heritage. Folklore pairs well with other disciplines like English, but these hybrid disciplines often lose ethnographic training to gain other skills. In practical terms, this means I'm able to gather and analyze folklore as it emerges in communities, while scholars of hybrid disciplines might apply folkloristics to projects like literary criticism of existing texts. This matters because the ways folklorists approach problematic elements of culture are often rooted in the ethnographic side of the discipline, where we do the work of interrogating our own biases so we can approach the folklore of others equitably. I once said when I was a graduate student: "If you told me that you were an axe murderer, I'd ask where you bought your axes." It's not quite that simple, and I have been trained to deal with difficult research situations. At the same time, if we don't study the historical realities underpinning the local legend above, or the contemporary political concerns embedded in white nationalist music, or the many other problematic elements of culture, we can't navigate toward a better version of the world.

Speaking of white nationalism, one of my favourite articles on the topic comes from the ethnomusicological part of my training. In it, Benjamin R. Teitelbaum discusses extensive field research into the career of the white nationalist singer Saga. But what interested me most as a graduate student was his approach to this admittedly difficult topic. He writes that accurate scholarship is rooted in ethical, respectful, collaborative relationships with research participants, but this is troubled in situations where scholars "oppose the agendas of those they study." He further writes that:

I aspired to a method that would not only allow me to observe, speak, and spend time with radical nationalists, but that would also provide me access to their criticisms during the writing stages of my research. In order to achieve such collaborative relationships, I have adjusted the ways I describe my consultants and their cause. In this article I avoid language, terminology, and in some cases, lines of inquiry they find offensive. Further, I invited my consultants to evaluate my analyses, first in conversation, and later in writing. All individuals interviewed in this article have had a chance to review their quotes, and some have helped shape the article as a whole.¹

Graduate student Ceallaigh was impressed right down to her bones with this approach. Yes, it avoided certain language, terminology, and lines of inquiry that also deserve ethnographic study, but it gained the informed participation of research participants. As a result, we learned more about Saga and her fellow musicians than we would otherwise, and we came to understand them better. Understanding doesn't have to equal agreement, and in this case it certainly doesn't, for Teitelbaum or for me. But without it, we can't navigate toward that better version of the world.

Another ethnographer who blew me away was Elaine Lawless. In her 2001 book titled Women Escaping Violence: Empowerment Through Narrative, Lawless discusses her own history of domestic violence, writing that:

On a more personal note, I believe I was drawn to this work because I, too, survived an abusive marriage. To write that sentence requires almost more strength than I can muster. In fact, I wrote this entire book without writing that sentence. I have come back now, at the end of this book journey, to admit that I have a story, too. In our time, writing about one’s self has become a professional imperative—that is, we are required now to acknowledge our cultural and social “baggage,” our biases and our political leanings, to the extent to which we are able to recognize these and admit to them—but such writing may also lead to a dangerous fall into the trap of selfish indulgence. Thus, I have been more than a little reluctant to place myself into the narrative of this book. Yet as the book came full circle, I realized that working on the book and with the women’s stories repeatedly invoked my own story, in a kind of narrative imperative that should be honored for the book to become “whole.”²

It was gutting, that passage, and so was much of the book. But throughout her work on domestic violence across several publications, Elaine Lawless is rigorous in her scholarship. Yes, she does shine a light on her own frailties when necessary, but never once does she depart from the the ethnographic work at hand, and never once does her writing become confessional. Instead, she navigates a profound personal tragedy to write about the very thing that haunts her. Would it have been easier to study something else? Almost certainly. Did she weather the disapproval of colleagues for choosing to study domestic violence? Quite a bit. But she is also a true guide through dark terrain, and she was likely trusted by her research participants for just that reason. We need this kind of guidance if we are to navigate toward that better version of the world.

These are only two of many ethnographers who come to mind. Others include Barbara Rieti, who writes about historical folklore of witchcraft in Newfoundland with attention to the cultural milieu of the province and the nuanced roles of witches and witchcraft in it.³ This brings us full circle, back to that Scottish ravine. How would I approach an article about Clan Colquhoun women who might or might not have been murdered there? Well, it would depend upon the information I uncovered in my research of the local legend. But I would consult Rieti's work for ways to bring the surviving narratives into conversation with local culture of the period. I would consult Lawless' work as well, to remind me that it's all right to have an emotional response to the ethnographic work I do, but it's not all right to make that work about those emotions. I might even consult Teitelbaum's work for help analyzing the motivations of people who contributed to those murders (if indeed they happened at all).

There isn't a universal approach to writing about dark folklore. I will tell you, however, that my own ethnographic work in the Toronto animal rights community scared me most of the time because I risked the unwanted interest of police in gathering data about local animal rights activists. I was also at vigils where activists were verbally and physically assaulted, and there was no way for outsiders to know that I was present in a research capacity. But I would do it again, I would be scared again, and I would let myself fumble again. While my own contributions to dark folklore have been comparatively small so far, I value this kind of work. I hope you value it a little now as well.

Footnotes