Eric Maple (1916–1994) was an English folklorist and author known for his studies of

witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...

and folk magic in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, in particular his first-hand research into the folklore surrounding the cunning men

James Murrell James Murrell (c. 1785 – 16 December 1860), also known as Cunning Murrell, was an English cunning man, or professional folk magician, who spent most of his life in the town of Hadleigh in the eastern English county of Essex. In this capaci ...

and

George Pickingill George Pickingill (c. 1816 – 10 April 1909) was an English farm labourer who lived and worked in the village of Canewdon in the eastern English county of Essex. Widely considered to be a cunning man, or vocational folk magician, he report ...

. Born in Essex to a family of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

ish ancestry, his mother was a

Spiritualist Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century The ''long nineteenth century'' i ...

medium. Having little formal education, he has been described as a "

self-made man "Self-made man" is a classic phrase coined on February 2, 1842 by Henry Clay in the United States Senate, to describe individuals whose success lay within the individuals themselves, not with outside conditions. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Foun ...

". In the early 1950s, he discovered the scholarly field of

folkloristics Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

, and decided to use a folkloric methodology to explore the folk stories of his home county. This resulted in the publication of four research articles in ''Folklore'', the journal of

The Folklore Society The Folklore Society (FLS) is a national association in the United Kingdom for the study of folklore. It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts an ...

: "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). 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." These articles and others would be reprinted in ''Essex Countryside'' 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. However, these books eschewed any academic standards, with Smith noting that they lacked "the strength" of his earlier papers in ''Folklore''.

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* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Maple, Eric 1916 births 1994 deaths English folklorists