[Hardy-l] Re: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 12

[ANN WHITLOCK]

>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:58:05 -0500
> From: Rosemarie Morgan <Rosemarie.morgan at yale.edu>
> Subject: [Hardy-l] Notebooks and folk Traditions
> To: hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
> Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20070713073532.024e5b80 at rm82.mail.yale.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

>
> Well Ann, you surprise me!  Offhand, I can certainly recall  some "folk
> traditions" recorded in the Notebooks. Re Arabella & contaminated beer, 
> for
> example. TH notes the fraudulent use of "beer flavour" mixed with water
> used by publicans. There are also useful segments on illegitimacy, on
> entailment, on the "forbidding of banns," on women dressing as men in 
> order
> to steal cattle,  on various (curious & ingenious) methods of robbery, on
> various folk "medicinal" cures including use of snuff & secretly doping
> others with opium and what about killing by staring?
>
> It helps to use the Notebooks as stepping stones and to research beyond
> them -- going to the primary sources.
> Cheers
> Rosemarie

Yes, I agree that the notebooks are valuable as are Hardy's letters. There 
were widely differing views on this topic among the members of the Natural 
History and Antiquarian Field Club. There is also quite surprising evidence 
to indicate that some of those with an seemingly traditional approach to 
education and learning also acknowledged the intelligent insight of some of 
the local wise women and conjurers  rather than dismissing them as the 
quaint relics of an illiterate peasantry.
I am hoping to synthesise some of the strands in my investigations during a 
research trip to Dorset County Museum this month. I also plan to investigate 
in what circumstances others were an influence on Hardy, and where his own 
folk background influenced the thinking of his more traditionally educated 
contemporaries.
Ann W.
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