Pip's Hellsborough Diary
The vast majority of my diary writing concerns things that I find and experience in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, that, after all, it what this whole thing is all about. This journal entry is different. I wanted to talk about an experience before I ever visited Hellsborough.
This experience was long before I started studying for my PhD, I was still an undergraduate and despite having a lifelong love of all things supernatural, and investigating many strange phenomena in Yorkshire and further abroad, I had never found anything that hadn't already been discovered by someone else, usually many times before.
The study of folklore is a strange thing, some would say a pointless thing - why study old wives tales, they say - what is the point, what can you learn - how does it improve our understanding of, well, anything?
To be fair, this is often my more logically orientated brothers and sisters who work in the STEM fields -- that is Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths -- that raise these things. Likewise, those of us in the arts and humanities refer to them as techies and nerds that are sometimes just missing the point in their headlong dive into the pursuits of wealth, prosperity, the future of humanity, and deeds of that like.
Might it be them, I reason, that is missing something by not learning about the achievements of our forefathers and mothers?
I mean a tale maybe a tale, but it had a genesis somewhere, otherwise it wouldn't have gained any traction to begin with, would it?
Think of the modern day meme. Memes can spread incredibly quickly these days via social media. They change as they encounter different cultures, different ages groups, different tribes -- they mutate, take on lives of their own -- is that not exactly like folklore? Are old wives tales, legends and myths not just ancient memes?
Maybe, but why investigate the origin of memes? My logical friends say. And the argument -- discussion -- starts anew.
Sooner or later someone will mention God. It's always a surprise to me how many devotees of evolution; dedicated biologists and geneticists, also commit to having faith in a supreme being.
Isn't God a meme? An old wives tale?
I just can't reconcile the two at all myself, but I guess that's all good, it's all just a part of life's rich tapestry. Possibly I have been influenced by d'divi - Dunlockslyn
As a folklorist I strive to understand the significance of beliefs. To me, folklore means something –- to the tale teller, to the song singer, to the believer -- no story would be re-told unless it continued to have some relevance to its audience.