ABSTRACT
In this essay, as in all her work, Boyes takes a performative-sociological stance. Like a good many other scholars, she interprets contemporary legends as social expressions of the fears and wishes of a cultural group (see, for example, her work on the legend of “The Crying Boy”— “Women’s Icon, Occupational Folklore and the Media.” In The Questing Beast: Perspectives on Contemporary Legend IV, eds. Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith. 117–32. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989). Here Boyes describes and analyzes reactions to a story reported from a Yorkshire (UK) town in 1860. She uses this “classic rumour legend” to discuss the way matters of truth are negotiated by believing narrators within the confines of their own socio-cultural grouping. She gives a detailed analysis of the context in which the legend flourished, the reasons that led participants initially to accept it as true, and the way subsequent challenges to its authenticity were dealt with. This essay is reprinted from Perspectives on Contemporary Legend, ed. Paul Smith. 64–78. Sheffield: CECTAL, 1984.
