Folk for the Future: An Interview with Lally MacBeth

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In your introduction you write that the book’s mission statement, as it were, is a call to arms to folk. Can you elaborate on this?

The book came about as a result of a project I’d been running on Instagram for years called The Folk Archive. I’d never envisaged writing a book. Rather, I’d seen The Folk Archive as a tool that other people could use. It’s a collation of images and information which aimed to point people towards things that were happening near them, or things that had happened in the past that could possibly be revived. I wanted the book to be a way of drawing attention to what is potentially fading or being forgotten or, perhaps, was never known. It’s a call to arms as much as I want people to use it to go out and find their own folk universe. I don’t want to be dictating but saying you can do this for yourself. It’s a gift. 

You write incredibly carefully about the different political aspects of folk. Could you explain the difference between a folk collector and a folk practitioner?

When I began my research, I was really aware that there is a whole canon of folklorists who are not all male, but largely male, men like Cecil Sharp who have a lot to answer for in terms of what has been brought into the folk canon. I wanted to find a different term, so I came up with folk collector over folklorist. A lot of the people I was looking for, and they were predominantly women, were not collecting or focusing on folk as a sole goal. They were doing it because they were passionately interested in it. Like Elsie Matley Moore’s fascination with stained glass or Dorothy Hartley’s explorations into folk cookery. Fascination was their motive, not a need to make an encyclopaedic history. Cecil Sharp, he’s not all bad, but he did write out a lot of the messier, muddier parts of folk and he was very classist. Some argue he wasn’t, but I think that Morris dancing would be different as a movement if he hadn’t sanitised tunes and dances. 

It was also a helpful way for people reading the text to think of themselves as collectors. The term folklorist puts it into the realms of academia but that doesn’t lend itself to the movement. Folk is for the people. It should be about what we are doing in our everyday lives which is immediately at odds with the higher echelons of a fancy organisation somewhere.

That leads to the idea of talking about established collections versus liminal spaces and, ultimately, who gets to write, or record, history.

A big part of what I was trying to achieve was bringing back some of the voices that have been left out or are not at the forefront of the conversation. Those individuals who might not be stars of the folkloric movement but are doing quieter work which is equally as important. 

There is something hopeful, something alluring, about being transported into a world in which we can be completely immersed.

I explore Romany and Traveller populations but also canals and the cut and the idea that these communities move, and as a result, they’re not tangible. They might be there one day but they’ll be somewhere completely different the next. They are still important. Things don’t have to be in a museum for them to matter. They can be a part of our daily existence and still be an object we need to engage with. 

You seem to straddle both worlds: you’re both a collector and a practitioner.

I think that has become more common, but it was unusual in the past. There was an attitude of folklorists going in, collecting the dance or the song and then extracting themselves. That was an attitude I always felt was at odds with folk because it is so much about community and involving yourself in order to properly understand what it is. 

I’ve been a Morris dancer for quite a long time and mock mayor in Penryn – which was an amazing, illuminating experience because it made me understand the custom in a very different sort of way. I understood it to be a revived custom of a world-turned-upside-down idea where the common person gets to be mayor for a day. But, through practising it, I realised that it has a radical potential as a custom. For one day only (although I did it for a year), you process around the town and make proclamations of things you wish to happen. They can be silly or they can be quite serious. If used in the correct way, they can be useful lobbying tools. Folk customs in general can do this.

Well Dressings are a good example. Communities use them to point out injustices in their area. They can range from post office closures to NHS cuts. It’s a subtle, yet powerful, form of protest.

You write a lot about folk practices as inverting the social order, for example the coronation bonfires and the threatening reminder of ‘We gift you this, but be careful, otherwise you might end up on top of it’.

It’s the idea of the mob mentality. We’re here, we’re friendly, but we could turn. Mock mayoral customs have that, as do a lot of folk customs. It’s a nice nasty thing. People are sometimes scared by the nasty bit, but it’s absolutely part of it.

Without it, folk wouldn’t set you apart from the everyday. It’s important that these customs are spectacular; they use costumes, sound and sensory experiences to convey a sense of awe and wonder. If you think of the ‘Obby ‘Oss in Padstow or The Burryman in South Queensferry, these are visceral experiences. They’re weird and amazing, and everyone is invested in what’s taking place. They lead you somewhere deeper than you would otherwise be in ordinary life. I’m often asked why people are so interested in folk now. A large part of it is because there is something hopeful, something alluring, about being transported into a world in which we can be completely immersed.

Can you address the slight tension in folk being for everyone and everyone being folk while also consisting of regional customs that have been invented and intended to celebrate specific communities who might not welcome outsiders?

I was really aware of this when writing the book. As someone who grew up in Cornwall but is not Cornish, I’ve always felt slightly on the periphery. With a lot of folk customs here there is an emphasis that they are for that community. It’s tricky because while I understand that on one level, it’s also incredibly exclusionary. It can become more about it being exclusionary than celebratory. It’s a tentative balance. 

For folk to make sense now, it has to change to reflect communities and the times that we live in.

At Flora Day in Helston they have different dances. They have the Hal-an-Tow which is the mystery play that anyone can join, yet they also have the Flora Day Midday dance which you have to be born in Helston to partake in. Which dance takes place first is organized hierarchically.

But I visited for the first time last year and it was the most amazing and inclusive environment. It didn’t feel like it had to be that a custom is for the community but excluding others – it can do both. With the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss, Padstowers have been pushed out of their town because of second homers, and they’re bussed in to perform their custom. It’s almost the last thing they have left. 

I’m a big believer in people being able to get involved. There are lots of revived customs which are incredibly welcoming. Like wassails, for example, no one will be excluded. In the past, it has been difficult to infiltrate some customs if you are not from that community, but folk is an ever-changing picture.

You wrote: ‘A very distant past that never really existed now sits in our recent past. Memory is revival. Revival is memory. What is more folk than that?’  

Nostalgia is a huge part of folk and, yet, nostalgia can be quite a dangerous thing.

Nostalgia held in the wrong context is definitely a dangerous thing. We live in an era where everyone on the internet is keen to tell you that the world was better seventy or so years ago. I don’t think it was. 

Nostalgia plays a part in all representations of folk in this country, but my argument is that there has to be a balance between moving forward and being wary of the fact that we’ve been told certain things about certain practices or customs which are not necessarily historically accurate. You have to have a critical eye. For folk to make sense now, it has to change to reflect communities and the times that we live in. It doesn’t make sense to cling desperately to the past.

Here in Cornwall, The Falmouth Community Collective were recently elected to Town Council. It’s interesting that some people who voted for them also voted for Reform. While those who might be part of a folk revival and those who vote Reform might look like two very different groups, they seem to have something in common.

It’s wanting to feel like you belong to a place and that you have a community of people around you. Everybody feels that way. That was partly the reason I couldn’t live in London – I missed being able to walk down the street and say hello to people I vaguely knew. 

People want change. I’m not a Reform voter by any means, but there is a certain bracket, and it doesn’t include all Reform voters, but there are some who have been taken in by Reform because of a promise of change. 

It’s funny that folk has had a huge boom on social media because it is a total rejection of having a phone and having to communicate digitally.

There were so many community projects that came out of lockdown in Cornwall. There was an emphasis on love and kindness and looking after one’s neighbour. After the pandemic, it reverted– everyone went back into their lanes as it were. It was so sudden and distressing for many people. We’d had this glimpse of another way of being. Reform exploited that. At this moment it doesn’t feel like there is anyone on the left who is promoting an idea of community. 

Can we talk about your alter ego, Hector Nit? You wrote in an article, ‘I’ve always enjoyed a sense of comfort, of being anonymous in a place, to some extent, being lonely’. A lot of your work requires you to be like a magpie in human form, constantly bringing our attention to lonely objects. Is embodying an alter ego another way of allowing yourself to be invisible while being in public?

I’m a really shy person. Hector Nit was a tool to be more confident on a public platform. 

I’ve always loved dressing up and using clothes to feel more performative. Folk is brilliant for that – you can wear fantastic hats or strange masks, and it’s like wearing a different version of yourself. Hector Nit came about through a group project I did in Cornwall about an artist called Ithell Colquhoun. We all took anagrammatic names, and Hector was mine. He then stuck and became this strange character. Pretty much everyone I know knows about Hector.

He became the fool of my Morris side because we needed one. Hector Nit is very foolish. He wears a little straw hat with Hector Nit written on it. It’s fun and also helpful if you are someone who likes the idea of performing but don’t think you can do that as yourself. He’s silly and naughty but in a kind way. Generally, Morris fools are bantery; they tend to bop people on the head. I wanted Hector to be a shy-girl fool. 

What do you make of the statement ‘Belonging and finding the interesting things that are happening doesn’t come from the digital, it comes from going out into the world’. How would you respond to that given that the internet is a useful tool which has aided you in your work?

If used in a positive way, the internet can be an incredible resource and an incredibly consoling thing for people who aren’t able to get out – it enables them to access a community, or a sense of one. 

I’d be hypocritical if I said it wasn’t helpful. It can point you to things in the physical realm. We’re at a special point in history that we’re able to have both. It makes everything accessible and open to everything.

That goes back to an earlier point about why there is a current folk renaissance. Yes, we live in a divisive time with world conflicts and climate change and useless politicians and people are confused and angry, but is it also to do with a reaction to social media?

It’s funny that folk has had this huge boom on social media because in part it is a total rejection of having a phone and having to communicate digitally. But I like the way people have co-opted social media for their own use. It is a rejection of it being something which is miserable or depressing. We can inject it with good things that are inspiring or help you to think in a different way. If social media is used in that way, then it can be a hopeful thing.

If you had to have a dinner party and you could invite three of your folk heroes, who are you inviting, what’s the setting and what food are you serving?

The setting would have to be a beautiful barn or an open air folk museum – perhaps St Fagans in Wales. I’d definitely invite Dorothy Hartley so she could cook a folk-appropriate meal. She wrote a history of folk cookery, as she calls it, in England. The recipes are very strange. They include the use of seaweed and ceremonial cakes. I’d also have to include Florence White who wrote about folk cookery. I can see them arguing but, ultimately, getting on. Dorothy was much more rugged, she’d sleep in hedges and cycle everywhere, whereas Florence was a bit more of a lady. She wouldn’t have been seen dead in a hedge. 

Also, Elsie Matley Moore because she would have been a real grump. She was very single minded, going around painting her stained glass. She didn’t care about people too much. She had a goal and she had to get it done. I love that. She’d be an interesting guest, if not a very communicative one. 

Barbara Jones, too, an illustrator and collector of things who is a real hero of mine. She put together the exhibition, Black Eyes and Lemonade, which changed the conversation about what objects could be considered folk. She included pub signs, beer mats – mass-produced objects which because they’d been made by machines weren’t deemed folk. I’d love to pick her brains.

Is there a question you might ask them?

What was driving them to go and collect folk objects? It is a unique kind of person who rejects being financially successful and having a career. 

Do you have advice for Londoners who want to find folk?

There’s an amazing Mummers’ play that happens on the Thames every year to celebrate the Twelfth Night with a Green Man, a Holly King and all sorts of people who come and sing. It’s wonderful and anyone can go. If you’re willing to go on a ramble, there’s always something to be found.

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Lally MacBeth is an artist, writer and curator based in Cornwall. In 2021, she co-founded Stone Club with Mathew Shaw. Her debut book, The Lost Folk, is published by Faber.

Rose Brookfield is a writer and gardener based in London.

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