Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape

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Before beginning this I had considered any Devil-related features on the landscapes that I know well. By 1700, Harte argues, landscape stories were being reworked to include the Devil to “replace older heroes” as “part of a structured forgetting” (p. 52f.).

Cloven Country | Reaktion Books Cloven Country | Reaktion Books

Perhaps the most unnerving tales are not those of Hell's Hounds chasing men across Bodmin Moor (bad and selfish gentry are also targets of devil tales which, like fairy tales, can have 'moral purpose) but the use of the Devil to re-envision those lightning strikes on churches that kill the faithful.In the battle of good versus evil, personified by God and the Devil, I find the latter to be the more interesting character. God, languidly playing finger-bump with naked Adam, is intentionally aloof, letting Man decide his own destiny. Oh, he has his vengeful side but, frankly, it's been a while since we've had to build an ark. Cloven Country is an extensive and well-rounded exploration of the image of the Devil as reflected in the English landscape and folklore record, penned in Harte's inimitable clever and witty style. Although rigorously academic, you always feel like you have sat down for a pint with Jeremy, probably in a pub named after one of the Devil's exploits, whilst being regaled with tales. Pull a chair up to the fire, get yourself a drink and a copy of Cloven Country . . . You will not be disappointed." Folklore Podcast The Devil’s craftsmanship, so horribly casual in its immensity, of such enormity that it breaks open the mundane, is also bested, diverted, and limited in mirthful ways – and for all that his power is immense, he can be undermined by ordinary, salt-of-the-earth folks.

Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape - Jeremy Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape - Jeremy

These stories then are about the processes of a worldview meeting with the landscape. They are about the strangeness in the world, not necessarily as explanatory narratives, but the evocation of the pull which the so-called supernatural has. There are some 'big moments' - the emergence of the Protestant revolution and the crushing of Catholic ways of seeing, the itineracy of the working class and traders, the rise of a travelling middle class eager for sensation, the emergence of folkorists as a class - but these do not change the picture.But the name of the place resulted in the stories I told before and after. Many of the kids then, still recall them these days.

Cloven Country « enfolding.org Book Review: Cloven Country « enfolding.org

When speaking about the thaumaturge– the wonder-worker – we must remember that this was applied to magical practitioners and saints. Persons, latterly, so holy in many cases, that their merest presence induced miraculous events. That these saints chased up and down the country, cast out demons, blessed areas, and gave their names to holy wells is well known. But, with the Protestant Reformation, the notion of the saints as miraculous figures and thaumaturges began to dwindle. And that is the point of the book - to demonstrate just how fluid folklore can be and how it gets shaped by culture and society, appropriates the past and literary influences (much as country dance is often 'debased' aristocratic dance) and continues to evolve. At Crawshawbooth near Burnley, there was a football match on a Sunday when an unexpectedly powerful player joined the game as replacement for an injured player. One shot at the ball and it disappeared into the sky in a flash of fire, along with the strange player, and that was the end of the game.Cloven Country is an extensive and well-rounded exploration of the image of the Devil as reflected in the English landscape and folklore record, penned in Harte's inimitable clever and witty style. Although rigorously academic, you always feel like you have sat down for a pint with Jeremy, probably in a pub named after one of the Devil's exploits, whilst being regaled with tales. Pull a chair up to the fire, get yourself a drink and a copy of Cloven Country . . . You will not be disappointed." This is a damnably good book, thanks largely to Harte's wit and erudition and ability to take folk tales at more than face value, and tease out inferences that would be opaque in a less insightful writer's hands." There's a spectrum to the stories, though. While most have a relatively happy ending, some are chilling, even as we know better. Simon Costin, director of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic and founder of the Museum of British Folklore

Cloven Country by Jeremy Harte | Waterstones Cloven Country by Jeremy Harte | Waterstones

Unlikely was he to have callouses upon his hands, though he could raise up walls and dykes with little effort. In this sense, he resembles the learned and landed classes who were supposedly the “betters” of the ordinary people. Just as now, the rich and powerful had privilege – literally “private law” – which others did not: a different set of rules by which they altered the world to their whim, and the poor labourer or widowed woman would have no choice but to be swept along. Harte gives us the tales of toadsmen, horse-whisperers, and porch-watchers possibly already known to the kind of person reading this review. He also discusses the cunning men and women of England, though his suggestion that those practitioners did not understand the books they had due to illiteracy seems contentious, particularly given some recent scholarship by scholars like Owen Davies et al. The brief comparison with Celtic stories is instructive because the Welsh tradition managed to avoid the early modern emphasis on the Devil and so retained forms of the same stories as the English with an older medieval cast of characters. Suspicions that a parson might be a master conjuror continued to shape perceptions of the clergy in southwest Britain until well into the nineteenth century. This could be because the peninsula was culturally remote, like other mountainous western districts; perhaps incumbents thought it better to use their own Latin and Hebrew in high occult style than let their parishioners trust in the village wizard; maybe the poor communications of the region forged many lonely parishes where, in the absence of social equals to talk to, a university-trained scholar could go quietly mad. Whatever the cause, Devon and Cornwall are the heartland of the conjuror-parsons. (p. 104) Although [Harte] will retell a tale with a nimble and gleeful charm, he’ll then carefully examine them. Harte's skill as a writer makes this process seamless. It also renders what could be an academic and slightly dry exercise every bit as interesting as the narratives themselves. Come for the telling of folktales; stay for the workings of folklore. Cloven Country is testament to Harte's deep personal and learned knowledge of the folklore of England. He’s seemingly read everything and been everywhere – and given the book is illustrated from his collection, clearly also bought the postcard. His writing style is wry and frequently aphoristic. Harte is one of Britain's most eminent folklorists, whose previous works have included detailed accounts of gypsy folklore, holy wells and an award-winning book on fairy traditions. As Cloven Country is coming from a more recognised publisher, hopefully his work will now reach a wider audience. Purely on the basis of this erudite, witty and exceptionally entertaining book, it clearly deserves to. 'This is my favourite book of the year so far. It is immaculately researched, superbly written and – like all Jeremy Harte’s work – genuinely breaks new ground in folklore studies. Only somebody with his breadth of knowledge, not only of the lore but of related fields of history, myth and literature, could have done as well. '