Eric Maple (1916–1994) was an English folklorist and author known for his studies of witchcraft and folk magic in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Essex, in particular his first-hand research into the folklore surrounding the cunning men James Murrell and George Pickingill.

Born in Essex to a family of Kentish ancestry, his mother was a Spiritualist medium.[1] Having little formal education, he has been described as a "self-made man".[1] In the early 1950s, he discovered the scholarly field of folkloristics, and decided to use a folkloric methodology to explore the folk stories of his home county.[1] This resulted in the publication of four research articles in Folklore, the journal of The Folklore Society: "Cunning Murrel" (March 1960), "The Witches of Canewdon" (December 1960), "The Witches of Dengie" (Autumn 1962), and "Witchcraft and Magic in the Rochford Hundred" (Autumn 1965).[1] The folklorist Alan A. Smith would later describe these papers as "a perhaps unique contribution to the literature of English witchcraft. Totally jargon-free, they are the raw stuff of folklore, stories told by real people about still remembered (reputed) witches and their doings."[1] These articles and others would be reprinted in Essex Countryside[2] in a series, "Legends of the Essex Witches".

He then embarked on authoring a wide range of books about folklore and the supernatural for a popular audience, which proved sufficiently financially successful that he became a full-time writer.[1] However, these books eschewed any academic standards, with Smith noting that they lacked "the strength" of his earlier papers in Folklore.[1]

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Smith 1995, p. 87.
  2. ↑ "Cunning Murrell Bibliography". Hadleigh & Thundersley Community Archive. Retrieved 12 December 2014.

Bibliography

  • Baker, James W. (1996). "White Witches: Historic Fact and Romantic Fantasy". Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. James R. Lewis (ed.). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. pp. 171–192. ISBN 978-0791428900.
  • Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820744-3.
  • Hutton, Ronald (2014). "Response to Pickingill Article". The Cauldron. Vol. 153. p. 6. ISSN 0964-5594.
  • Liddell, W.E.; Howard, Michael (1994). The Pickingill Papers: The Origin of the Gardnerian Craft. Chieveley, Berkshire: Capall Bann. ISBN 978-1-898307-10-5.
  • Maple, Eric (December 1960). "The Witches of Canewdon". Folklore. Vol. 71, no. 4. London: The Folklore Society.
  • Maple, Eric (1965) [1962]. The Dark World of Witches. London: Pan Books.
  • Smith, Alan A. (1995). "In Memoriam: Eric Maple, 1916–1994". Folklore. London: The Folklore Society. 106: 87. doi:10.1080/0015587x.1995.9715897.
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