#97 / Dr Simon Young on Wollaton Gnomes, the Fairy census & Boggarts

Dr Simon Young is a British folklore historian based in Italy. He
has written extensively on the nineteenth-century supernatural.
His book The Boggart (from Exeter University Press) and The Nail
in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends (from Mississippi
University Press) are both out in 2022. He is the editor of
Exeter New Approaches to Legends, Folklore and Popular Legends
.

Dr. Young has undertaken the biggest folklore survey of its kind,
on behalf of the Fairy Investigation Society.  A
Cambridge-educated historian Dr. Young,  revived the society
for a new fairy census - 60 years on from the last one. It
gathered details of as many fairy sightings from the past century
as possible and to measure contemporary attitudes to fairies, the
details of which he shares with us in the show.

Simon briefly discusses his new title ‘The Boggart, Folklore,
History, Place-names and Dialect. Detailing the little-studied
and once much-feared boggart is a supernatural being from the
north of England. .


We discuss the Wollaton Gnomes - a famous sighting that happened
in 1979 in Nottingham, England. A  small group of children
were wandering the park early one evening when much to their
surprise they were chased by gnomes in motor cars!

In the Plus section of the show we discuss how children's
cultural trends and images can become folkloric figures in their
own right and create moral panics. We discuss the nightmare and
the interest fairies have in human sexuality. Simon goes into
detail how fairy interactions have changed over the last 200
years from more intense, sometimes physical encounters to more
sedate sightings. The subject of UFOs and the arguments for and
against the fairy analogues come up and we explore some
interesting ideas around the men in black and the wider thematic
interrelations between the phenomenons. Simon goes on to describe
the fairies as ‘social beings’ and how they represent a distorted
mirror of our own society which provides a way we can think of
ourselves outside the box.

Show notes:
Simon’s academia page:
https://independent.academia.edu/SimonYoung43
Boggart & Banshee Podcast:
http://www.strangehistory.net/podcast/
Simon’s new Boggart book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boggart-Folklore-History-Placenames-Approaches/dp/1905816901/ref

More on Boggarts:
https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/the-boggart-a-study-in-shadows/

The Fairy census: http://www.fairyist.com/survey/
The Wollaton Gnomes:
https://faeryfolklorist.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-wollaton-park-gnomes.html

Press articles on Simon’s work:
https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/06/people-sex-outdoors-joined-sexy-fairies-magical-dogging-7136692/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5156475/Fairies-them.html

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/return-of-the-fairy-hunters


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