Hellebore #7: The Ritual Issue

 

Hellebore #7: The Ritual Issue by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is only the second issue of Hellebore I've read, having read issue 1 previously. Now I think I'm going to have to go back and collect the intervening five issues! Because while I really liked the first issue, this one really knocked my socks off! As with any great anthology, the sum is greater than the parts. But that won't stop me from looking at this issue piece by piece.

Francis Young's article "The Making of a Folklore Bible" traces the sometimes surprising historiography of how Folklore, Myths, and Legends of Britain not only came to be, but came to be beloved by so many. A series of anecdotes about the place the book holds in many contemporary folklorists lives and work.

In "Killing the May Queen," Catherine Spooner disabuses us of the notion that the white dress worn by the May Queen and even the notion of the May Queen are of ancient origin. In fact, the association of the dress and the supposed sacrifice is of quite recent origin. Spooner outlines the historical ambiguity of sartorial choice and ritual in a clear, concise manner accessible to scholar and stan alike.

Lest you weary of May Queens, Victoria Pearson unveils a wide variety of folk traditions from throughout the British isles in her article "The Ritual Isles". A nice grab-bag of celebrations from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern Ireland.

In "Ancient Antlers, Clashing Swords" Clare Button expounds on the Morris dance and analyzes not only its history, but ways in which it has been and can further be updated to meet societal needs.

The beautifully illustrated (by Richard Wells) article "May Day on Summerisle" is an examination of the hodge-podge of traditions mashed up in The Wicker Man written by Hellebore editor Maria J. Pérez Cuervo. It's a good reminder, along with the other essays in this issue, that cinema does not equal reality, though much can be gleaned from that medium, if one is careful.

In "Possessed, Magical, and Dangerous to Handle," Hannah Armstrong expounds on the feminizing influence that Jane Ellen Harrison had on ritual and its interpretation. It's a fascinating mini-biography that shows how the talented Harrison has affected modern ritual, possibly as much as Frazer. This has gotten me wanting to know much more about Harrison and her history.

Aleco Julius provides an excellent primer on labyrinths, their history in the British Isles and in Europe, and dances associated with these mystical structures in "The Path of the Labyrinth". There is so much more about labyrinths that one can study, but this gives a great basis from which one can spiral inward in their study of these ritual devices.

Angeline Morrison pens a poignant and provocative essay in "Ghost Hunting in the Ruins of Empire," in which she engages in intentional subterfuge of British society's quieting of the black voice. As I've read and reread, I've found that this is possibly the most important of the pieces in this volume. Notions of Fisher's "Weird" and rituals of misrule lead to many salient points regarding historical whitewashing and a sort of inverted colonialism that leads to the denial of black history (especially pre-colonial black history) of the British Isles. The structure of this essay, with it's "slippery" transitions between philosophical and historiographical arguments reminds me of Michel Foucault's writing, truth be told. This is an essay worth reading and re-reading, the kind of genre-breaking, media-spanning (and I mean, here, the academic notion of media as various ways of analyzing data, not the popular media) heuristic kit-bashing that spawns fresh, new thought. It's a bit of a jarring transition, going from the previous articles to this final trickster of an essay. But I can't think of a better way of planting the largest gem in the ritual crown of this issue of Hellebore.

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