Mary MacLeod Banks

Mary MacLeod Banks (1861 – 22 December 1951) was a folklorist, born Mary MacLeod McConnel in Scotland. She was president of the Folklore Society from 1937 to 1939.

Mary MacLeod Banks
Born
Mary MacLeod McConnel

1861
Edinburgh
Died22 December 1951
England
NationalityBritish
Other namesM. M. Banks, Mary Macleod
OccupationFolklorist, writer

Early life

Mary MacLeod McConnel was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of David Cannon McConnel, a colonist of Queensland, and Mary McConnel.[1] She spent her formative years in Australia, at the family's sheep and cattle station in Cressbrook,[2] and in Europe.[3] As a young widow, she studied English literature at Oxford.[4]

Career

Research and service

Banks worked with social reformer Octavia Hill 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".[5] 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 from 1906, and a member of the Philological Society.[3]

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 and especially its curator Henry Balfour, who became her close friend.[6] During the Second World War donated artifacts she had collected during her fieldwork to the Pitt Rivers Museum, including a chamberpot and brass horse ornaments.[3]

Publications

Her published research included British Calendar Customs: Scotland (1937, 1941)[7][8] and British Calendar Customs: Orkney and Shetland (1946).[9] 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),[10] wrote The Shakespeare Story Book (1902),[11] and edited An Alphabet of Tales: An English Fifteenth Century Translation of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besançon (1904),[12] Stories from the Faerie Queene (1916),[13] and Honour & Arms: Tales from Froissart.[14] A personal project was her memoir,[15] Memories of Pioneer Days in Queensland (1931),[5][16] 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.[1]

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.[5][17] Her niece Dorothea McConnel married Australian psychologist Elton Mayo; another niece was Australian anthropologist Ursula McConnel.[18]

References
  1. Dawson, Barbara (2014), "Mary McConnel: Christianising the Aborigines?", In the Eye of the Beholder, What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity, ANU Press, pp. 99–124, ISBN 978-1-925021-97-4, JSTOR j.ctt13wwvt9.13; extracted quote on p. 112.
  2. "Hereford Prestige is High; McConnel History; Early Prejudices Overcome". Queensland Country Life. 6 July 1950. p. 9. Retrieved 7 March 2020 – via Trove.
  3. Petch, Alison. "Mary MacLeod Banks". England: the other within. Pitt Rivers Museum. Retrieved 11 January 2011.
  4. "Personal". The Brisbane Courier. 21 January 1901. p. 5. Retrieved 7 March 2020 – via Trove.
  5. L, E. F. C. (1 January 1952). "Obituary Mary Macleod Banks". Folklore. 63 (1): 42–43. doi:10.1080/0015587X.1952.9718095. ISSN 0015-587X.
  6. Banks, Mary M. (March 1939). "Obituary Notice: Henry Balfour" Folklore 50 (1): 111-112
  7. Banks, Mary Macleod (1941). British Calendar Customs: Scotland. Pub. for the Folk-lore society, W. Glaisher Limited.
  8. "British Calendar Customs". The Courier-Mail. 7 August 1937. p. 18. Retrieved 7 March 2020 – via Trove.
  9. Banks, Mary Macleod (1946). British Calendar Customs: Orkney & Shetland. Pub. for the Folk-Lore Society, W. Glaisher.
  10. Malory, Thomas (1900). The book of King Arthur and his noble knights: Stories from Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur. London (3 Paternoster Buildings). hdl:2027/hvd.hwlg2m.
  11. Banks, Mary Macleod (1902). The Shakespeare story-book. New York. hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t0wq1n95s.
  12. BANKS, Mary Macleod (1904). An Alphabet of Tales: an English 15th Century Translation of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besançon, from Additional MS. 25719 of the British Museum. for the Early English Text Society by Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.
  13. Spenser, Edmund; Banks, Mary Macleod (1916). Stories from the Faerie Queene. Frederick A. Stokes.
  14. "Honour & arms : tales from Froissart / edited by Mary Macleod ; illustrated by Gordon Browne". HathiTrust. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
  15. "Books of the Week: McConnel of Cressbrook". The Brisbane Courier. 5 December 1931. p. 20. Retrieved 7 March 2020 – via Trove.
  16. Banks, Mary Macleod (1931). Memories of pioneer days in Queensland. London: Cranton.
  17. "Deaths". The Courier-Mail. 31 December 1951. p. 8. Retrieved 7 March 2020 – via Trove.
  18. The Makers and Making Of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections. Melbourne Univ. Publishing. 16 August 2008. p. 421. ISBN 978-0-522-85989-8.
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