Birth, Marriage, and Death
Introduction
Key stages in the life cycle are often represented in folklore. For this seminar, we will divide into three groups: one will focus on birth customs, one will focus on marriage customs, and one will focus on death customs.
Seminar Questions
How have birth customs developed across Europe?
How have marriage customs developed across Europe?
How have death customs developed across Europe?
Required Reading
You should divide the readings between those in your group. You should each read three items (articles and/or book chapters).
Birth Customs
Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval EuropeLink opens in a new window (Princeton, NJ, 2004) [Chapters 1, 2, and 3]
Bennett, Margaret, ed., Scottish Customs: From the Cradle to the GraveLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Edinburgh, 1992), Part I.
Brand, John, Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies and Superstitions, ed. Henry Ellis, 2 vols (London, 1813), Vol. 2, pp. 1-18Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window.
Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart EnglandLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Oxford, 1999), Chapters 1-9
Jones, Peter Murray, and Lea T. Olsan, 'Performative Rituals for Conception and Childbirth in England, 900-1500Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89: 3 (2015), 406-433.
Marriage Customs
Bennett, Margaret, ed., Scottish Customs: From the Cradle to the GraveLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Edinburgh, 1992), Part II.
Brand, John, Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies and Superstitions, ed. Henry Ellis, 2 vols (London, 1813), Vol. 2, pp. 20-121Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window.
Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart EnglandLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Oxford, 1999), Chapters 10-16
Heinrich, Christel, 'Peasant Customs and Social structure: Rural Marriage Festivals in the Magdeburg Region in the 1920s', in The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community in Rural Society from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, ed. Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee (London, 1986), 224-34
Humphreys, Margaret, 'Gender Relationships, Matching, and Marriage Customs in an Irish Rural CommunityLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window', Folk Life 48:1 (2010), 13-34.
Death Customs
Bennett, Margaret, ed., Scottish Customs: From the Cradle to the GraveLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Edinburgh, 1992), Part III.
Brand, John, Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies and Superstitions, ed. Henry Ellis, 2 vols (London, 1813), Vol. 2, pp. 122-215Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window.
Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart EnglandLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (Oxford, 1999), Chapters 17-20
', Time and Mind 13/3 (2020), 245-265.
Lysaght, Patricia. “Visible Death: Attitudes to the Dying in IrelandLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window', Merveilles & Contes 9: 1 (1995), 27–60.
O’Connor, Anne, ‘To Hell or to Purgatory? Irish Folk Religion and Post-Tridentine Counter-Reformation Catholic Teachings’, Béaloideas 80 (2012), 115–41.
Further Reading
Black, Monica, Death in Berlin: From Weimar to Divided Germany (Cambridge, 2013)
Evans, E. Estyn, Irish Folk Ways (1957; rept. New York, 2000)
French, Katherine L., The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death (Philadelphia, 2008), Chapter 2 'Hatched, Matched, and Dispatched: Life Cycles and the Liturgy'.
Gennep, Arnold van, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee, introduction by Solon T. Kimball (Chicago, 1960)
Hitch, Sarah, 'From Birth to Death: Life-Change Rituals', in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, ed. Esther Eidinow, and Julia Kindt (Oxford, 2015), 521-36.
Hole, Christina, A Dictionary of British Folk Customs (Oxford, 1995)
Kingshill, Sophia, and Jennifer Westwood, The Fabled Coast: Legends and Traditions from Around the Shores of Britain and Ireland (London, 2014)
Kligman, Gail, The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Berkeley, 1988)
Koslofsky, Craig M., The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450-1700 (Basingstoke,1999)
Laurence, Anne, 'The Cradle to the Grave: English Observations of Irish Social Customs in the Seventeenth CenturyLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window', The Seventeenth Century 3: 1 (1988), 63-84.
Lee, Christina, Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals (Woodbridge, 2007)
Lewis-Simpson, Shannon, ed., Youth and Age in the Medieval North (Leiden, 2008)
Lindahl, Carl, John McNamara and John Lindow, eds, Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, 2 vols (Oxford, 2000)
Llewellyn, Nigel, The Art of Death: Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual, c. 1500-c. 1800 (London, 1991)
Lysaght, Patricia, ‘Visible Death: Attitudes to the Dying in Ireland’, Merveilles & Contes 9/1 (1995), 27–60.
Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí, The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopaedia of Myth, Legend and Romance (Woodbridge, 2006)
Orme, Nicholas, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven, 2021)
Owen, Trefor M., Welsh Folk Customs (Cardiff, 1959)
Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic: Sixteenth-Century Ethnographic Accounts of Baltic PaganismLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, ed. Francis Young (Leeds, 2022)
Simpson, Jacqueline, and Steve Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford, 2003)
Strange, Julie-Marie, Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870-1914 (Cambridge, 2010)
Tarlow, Sarah, Ritual, Belief, and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2010)
Westwood, Jennifer, and Jacqueline Simpson, The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England's Legends, from Spring-Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys (Harmondsworth, 2005)
Westwood, Jennifer, and Sophia Kingshill, The Lore of Scotland: A Guide to Scottish Legends (London, 2009)
Williams, Howard, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (Cambridge, 2006)
Wilson, Adrian, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England (Farnham, 2013), Chapter Four.