Dr. Jacqueline Simpson is a United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 researcher and author on folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

 and legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

.

She studied English Literature and Medieval Icelandic at Bedford College, University of London. Dr. Simpson has been, at various times, Editor, Secretary, and President of the Folklore Society

Folklore Society

The Folklore Society was founded in England in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts and crafts, customs and belief...

. She was awarded the Society's Coote Lake Research Medal in 2008. In 2010 she was appointed Visiting Professor of Folklore at the Sussex Centre of Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy at the University of Chichester, West Sussex. She has a particular interest in local legends (as opposed to international fairytales), and has published collections of this genre from Iceland, Scandinavia in general, and England (the latter in collaboration with the late Jennifer Westwood). She has also written on the folklore of various English regions, and was co-author with Steve Roud of the Penguin Dictionary of English Folklore. She lives in West Sussex

West Sussex

West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

She has been a point of reference for Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...

 since he met her at a book signing in 1997. Terry was asking everyone in the queue how many magpie rhymes they knew, researching Carpe Jugulum

Carpe Jugulum

Carpe Jugulum ) is a comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the twenty-third in the Discworld series. It was first published in 1998....

, and whilst most people gave one answer – the theme from Magpie

Magpie (TV series)

Magpie was a children's television programme shown on ITV from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. It was a magazine format show intended to compete with the BBC's Blue Peter, but attempted to be more "hip", focusing more on popular culture...

 – Jacqueline stated that she knew "about nineteen". This encounter eventually led to collaboration.

Works

• A Dictionary of English Folklore (with Steve Roud)
• Everyday Life in the Viking Age
• British Dragons
• European Mythology
• Folklore of Sussex
• Folklore of the Welsh Border
• Green Men and White Swans: The Folklore of British Pub Names, Random House Books (2010) ISBN 1847945155
• The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England's Legends, from Spring-heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys (with Jennifer Westwood) Penguin (2006) ISBN 0141021039
• Scandinavian Folktales (Penguin Folklore Library / Puffin) with Caroline Gowdy (1989) ISBN 0140595058
• A dictionary of historical slang (with Eric Partridge)
• Beowulf and Its Analogues (with George Norman Garmonsway and Hilda Ellis Davidson)
• Icelandic Folktales and Legends (Revealing History) 2nd Edition, NPI Media Group, (2004) ISBN 0752430459
• The Folklore of Discworld
  The Folklore of Discworld
  The Folklore of Discworld is a book written by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson as an ancillary to the Discworld series of novels. It details the folklore aspects of the Discworld novels and draws parallels with earth's folklore...
  
   (with Terry Pratchett)

Also cited for disclaiming theories proposed by Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray

Margaret Alice Murray was a prominent British Egyptologist and anthropologist. Primarily known for her work in Egyptology, which was "the core of her academic career," she is also known for her propagation of the Witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials in the Early Modern period of...

.

External links

• Repentant soul or walking corpse? Debatable apparitions in Medieval England by Jacqueline Simpson