The Great Folk Revival
- mooreacorrigan
- Jun 25
- 3 min read
Curiosity #5
Reposted from Substack June 24, 2025
***Please note that The Great Folk Revival (and its ramifications) is a vast and complicated topic. I by no means cover all the intricacies in this overview.**
I was recently relistening to a fascinating podcast episode on Selkies by the brilliant Three Ravens Podcast,1 and they mentioned the Great Folk Revival. I knew of this term vaguely from other books, articles, and podcasts, but this is the first time that it really piqued my curiosity.
The Great Folk Revival began in the early-1800s and lasted into the early-1900s, with its height peaking in the mid-1800s. It’s literary influence can be seen across the world in the works of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Asbjørnsen and Moe, Lady Jane Wilde, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, and W. B. Yeats. It can also be seen less directly in the works of children’s literature in the period, such as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
Musically, there was also a push to record folk songs in many European countries and in North America (although the American Folk Revival seems like it was more popular in the mid-1900s).
In art, we see many of the great ‘fairy tale’ artists appear during this period: Hugh Thomson, Edmund Dulac, and Arthur Rackham being some of the most well known. Their illustrations set in stone iconography that we still associate with fairy and folk tales today. There were also lesser known artists who used folk motifs in their work. Richard Dadd (who suffered from mental illness most of his life) used fairy imagery in much of his work, including his famous unfinished piece ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stoke.’
Now, what caused this sudden burst of ‘folk2’ interest? The 1800s was a time of great change. Two of those changes seem to be linked the most with the contemporary interest in the folk movements: industrialism and nationalism.
Although the industrialism really began earlier, it truly started to dominate European culture in the 1800s. More people moved from the country to urban places and many of the older traditions began to fade. Of course there was push back against this, as evidenced by the Romantic movement in art and literature, as well as the more physical and political movements, such as the Luddites3. These people argued that society should return to a more rural way of life. This a rather idealistic view, but an understandable one in times when poverty, injustice, and disease were on the rise in urban places. Folk lore was a way for people to connect with their roots, in a way. It was seen as low brow, yes, but also untouched by the corrupting forces of machines and city life.
Nationalism also played a large role in the British Folk Revival. The works of W. B. Yeats in particularly were used to create an image of an Ireland unified by their folk culture, rather than separated by English colonialism. Of course, nationalism is a double-edged sword. Kinder- und Hausmärchen, aka the Brothers Grimm’s Fairy Tales, were famously used in the 1930s and 40s by the Nazi’s to argue for German superiority, particularly focusing on the more antisemitic stories and stories that could be twisted to promote their (categorically false) theory of a superior race.4
Although there is a very dark side to the movement, the collection of tales, songs, and ideas from this time vastly influenced our current understanding of our past and what we now think of as fantasy. Without folk collectors (whatever their intentions were), it is likely that many of the tales would have been lost to time, and the vast tapestry of storytelling would be less intricate for that loss.
We (as fantasy writers and readers and movie enjoyers) need to be aware of the history surrounding folk lore in order to enjoy it with our eyes open, rather than in ignorance.
1 Seriously, check them out if you are interested in the folklore of Britain. They are great and they have a collection of their short stories coming out soon!
2 ‘Folk’ in these cases generally means ‘of the people.’ In Lally MacBeth’s introduction to her recent work The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk, she specifies that this categorization of the ‘folk’ others them, so that collectors (and readers) are not part of the folk, but rather observers.
3 For a brief description/history, see this link. https://www.history.com/articles/who-were-the-luddites
4 Grimm Reading covers this in a particularly good episode on the story The Good Bargain. Trigger warns for talk of antisemitism and Nazis, of course.
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