My research indicates that:
- Marie Clothilde Balfour resided in the village of Redbourne in the Lincolnshire Carrs from 1887 to 1889, having been born in Edinburgh, and having spent her early years in New Zealand before residing in Scotland and England prior to the collection of the stories.
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There was no payment for submissions to Folklore by the Folklore Society, and athough Balfour was acknowledged in the journal, the tales did not gain widespread recognition or fame for their collector and though Balfour may have benefited from the contacts made through the Society in her pursuit of a literary career, she did not gain materially from the collection of the Legends.
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The content of the stories, and the lengthy introduction by Balfour, reflect a commonly held interest by nineteenth century folklorists, in the survival of primitive culture and traditions.
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The folklore contained within the Legends, whilst much of it could be found in various parts of Britain, is in the main linked to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
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Similarly the dialect, particularly the vocabulary and grammar, appear to indicate the same origins, and lead to the assumption that Balfour had a good ear for dialect and phraseology but an inconsistent approach to recording such sound. A number of people from North Lincolnshire, who are familiar with the sound of the spoken word using dialect, are able to read the untranslated Legends.
There seem also to have been people living within the village of Redbourne, whose lives match the descriptions of the tellers of Tiddy Mun, The Dead Moon (and Sam'l's Ghost) and Yallery Brown, as outlined by Balfour in the introductions to the Legends.
The Legends as translated/slightly adapted, such as by Kevin Crossley-Holland, are easily used by storytellers (those that tell stories rather than read them) which seems to indicate that they had been told to Balfour.
Balfour, whilst she became a published writer after the collection of the Legends, does not appear to have been very successful in this career. She wrote a number of short stories, most of which were set in France, and which are low on dialogue and bear no resemblance to the Legends. The only piece of writing that can be compared to the content collected in the Carrs is a small section in her novel The Fall of the Sparrow which was partially set in a fictitious village in the Carrs. This novel includes storytelling within the vicarage and passages from the Dead Moon.