Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

From green men and jolly horse skulls to chasing cheeses down hills and burning effigies,

Britain has a rich tradition of folk customs.

Some are strange, some downlight silly.

But as Liz Williams explores in her book, Rough Music,

some of these traditions can also have a darker aspect,

based on shame, judgment, and social conformity.

I spoke to Liz to find out more.

Let's start with the title of the first chapter of your book, Rough Music, which is,

What is Folklore? And I mean, I thought that seems like a good place to start.

How do you define folklore?

It's a very interesting question because it's such a broad issue. And I take it to me not just

practices of the past, but also practices of the present, things that we're doing today that may

draw upon the past that may have come completely out of left field. And it's partly the actual textual

law of the country, so things that are written down, like the Arthurian Matter of Britain,

for example. I think that feeds into folklore. Grimois, you know, how to magical guides

feed into folklore. And so do the efforts of early historians who write things down. But there's an awful lot of folklore

that's unwritten, that's verbal, that's oral, that gets passed down into the culture that mutates and

changes and shifts. And these are things like the belief in the supernatural, for example,

and customs, which is really what rough music is all about, follows the year around from January to

December, and it's essentially about the customs of the country, what people actually get out

onto the streets and into the fields and do to celebrate the turning seasons or current events

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