ABSTRACT
The last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed the high-water mark of the Celtic Twilight, a literary movement centred around a revaluation of the long-standing colonial stereotype of Celts as an irrational, superstitious and emotionally volatile ‘race’. Although this movement was most prominent in Ireland, it also had its supporters in England, where Celtic ideals came to symbolize a ‘little England’ that had become lost amid the materialism, bureaucracy and expansionism of the British Empire. In the writings of folk music collectors, like Sabine Baring-Gould and William Henry Gill, the Celtic ideals of mysticism, reverence for nature, emotional expressiveness and venerable historical depth were made central to the valuation of England’s folk music. These minoritarian articulations of folk music’s cultural significance upset the hierarchy of national traits that had rationalized centuries of English expansionism within the British Isles as a civilizing mission. They also connected with immediate political disputes around Home Rule in Ireland and other British colonies.
