It is always difficult to determine the age of a folk tradition. There is a tendency to look to the earliest reference to an element of folklore and to then declare that this is its point of origin. That’s almost never the case. A tradition that appears in the written record likely was in vogue before that documentation, and indeed, it may originate a long time before the oldest written record – we simply can’t be sure.

I was amused by recent reports – expressed in astonishment – that the royal beekeeper had to tell the hives of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, as though this were something particular to the royal household. The tradition was widespread and was once something required of all owners of beehives: upon the death of the owner, the bees had to be told, or they might be inclined to leave their hive for some other place to live.

There was a general feeling that bees had to be treated with a great deal of respect. Some records describe giving the hive a portion of the food presented at funeral receptions. Other sources even describe informing the bees of weddings (and giving them some wedding cake) or of other important events. The general perception was that bees had to be treated as members of the household and that they could be easily offended, at which point they might cease to produce honey or they might leave altogether.

Simpson and Roud, Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore (2000) 20-21, offer several nineteenth-century citations for these traditions. This curious aspect of British folk culture has long attracted the attention of those writing about folklore.

When folklore was initially attracting the attention of serious, methodological nineteenth-century scholars, the general feeling about folk traditions (like the one dealing with informing bees of an owner’s death) were documenting much older beliefs. Early folklorist saw these traditions as granting them insight into much older if not ancient traditions.

This sort of nostalgia-driven perception led to some terrible racist conclusions about the value of “my people” as opposed to “yours” – particularly at the hands of the Nazis. This resulted in an abhorrence of the idea that traditions documented in the nineteenth century were ancient. Post WWII folklorists have tended to be consequently inclined to see documented traditions as more likely to have rather shallow histories, but politics-driven scholarship is never academia at its best.

A good example of this is the idea of knocking on/touching wood. Many early folklorists saw this as an effort to thank ancient tree spirits or to express thanks to the elves in the forest (or even a reference to drawing on the power of the True Cross). Later folklorists, finding a similar tradition first documented in late nineteenth-century children’s games, have attributed the folk tradition to that point of origin. Both ideas, however, rely on a certain amount of speculation. We simply can’t be sure when and how a folk tradition originated – and indeed, more than one explanation for such a tradition may be valid at the same time. Ultimately, holding to the oldest documentation as indicating a time of origin is simply a flawed methodology.

edited thanks to a user with the unfortunate name of /u/lapfarter, but who is otherwise a good egg.