Mary MacLeod Banks (1861 – 22 December 1951) was a folklorist, born Mary MacLeod McConnel in Scotland. She was president 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 ...

from 1937 to 1939.

Early life

Mary MacLeod McConnel was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of David Cannon McConnel, a colonist of

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

, and Mary McConnel.; extracted quote on p. 112. She spent her formative years in Australia, at the family's sheep and cattle station in

Cressbrook Cressbrook is a village in the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire. It lies in Water-cum-Jolly Dale at the foot of Cressbrook Dale. Population details at the 2011 Census are included in the civil parish of Litton. Before its Enclosure Act ...

, and in Europe. As a young widow, she studied English literature at

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Career

Research and service

Banks worked with social reformer

Octavia Hill Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a fa ...

as a young woman, She became a long-serving member of the Folklore Society from 1906, later serving on its council and as president from 1937–1939. She gave presidential addresses titled "Syncretism in a Symbol" and "Scottish Lore of Earth, its Fruits, and the Plough". In 1947 she received the first Medal for Folk Lore Research from the Society, for her work on Scottish calendar customs. She was also a fellow of the

Royal Historical Society The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...

from 1906, and a member of the

Philological Society The Philological Society, or London Philological Society, is the oldest learned society in Great Britain dedicated to the study of language as well as a registered Charitable organization, charity. The current Society was established in 1842 to ...

. Though based in London, Banks travelled extensively throughout Europe gathering material and researching the many papers she wrote for the society's journal. She maintained contact with the

Pitt Rivers Museum Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed t ...

and especially its curator

Henry Balfour ::''See also Henry Balfour (MP for Fifeshire)'' Henry Balfour FRS FRAI (11 April 1863 – 9 February 1939) was a British archaeologist, and the first curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum. He was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute, ...

, who became her close friend. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

donated artifacts she had collected during her fieldwork to the Pitt Rivers Museum, including a chamberpot and brass horse ornaments.

Publications

Her published research included ''British Calendar Customs: Scotland'' (1937, 1941) and ''British Calendar Customs: Orkney and Shetland'' (1946). She wrote the introduction and glossary for an edition of ''The Book of King Arthur and his Noble Knights:'' ''Stories from Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur'' (1900), wrote ''The Shakespeare Story Book'' (1902), and edited ''An Alphabet of Tales: An English Fifteenth Century Translation of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besançon'' (1904), ''Stories from the Faerie Queene'' (1916), and ''Honour & Arms: Tales from Froissart''. A personal project was her memoir, ''Memories of Pioneer Days in Queensland'' (1931), in which she acknowledged racial violence in her rural Australian childhood:

It was not until years after my childhood that I learnt of cruelties to the blacks, and I refused at first to believe it possible. This I know, that there were very many places where the natives were treated with kindness, and that much of the harshness was due to ignorance and misunderstanding. But for actual cruelty, which unfortunately cannot be denied, no excuse is possible.

Personal life

Mary MacLeod McConnel married Alfred Banks, an English architect. She was widowed when Banks died on a journey to the United Kingdom. She died in 1951, aged 90 years, in London. Her niece Dorothea McConnel married Australian psychologist

Elton Mayo George Elton Mayo (26 December 1880 – 7 September 1949) was an Australian born psychologist, industrial researcher, and organizational theorist.Cullen, David O'Donald. ''A new way of statecraft: The career of Elton Mayo and the development o ...

; another niece was Australian anthropologist

Ursula McConnel Ursula Hope McConnel (1888–1957) was a Queensland anthropologist and ethnographer best remembered for her work with, and the records she made of, the Wik Mungkan people of Cape York Peninsula. First trained at University College London, t ...

References

External links

The Online Books Page for Mary MacLeod Banks
John Mark Ockerbloom ed., University of Pennsylvania Libraries. {{DEFAULTSORT:Banks, Mary MacLeod 1861 births 1951 deaths 19th-century Scottish women writers Writers from Edinburgh Scottish folklorists Scottish women folklorists Presidents of the Folklore Society