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Charles Godfrey Leland

Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 – March 20, 1903) was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and educated at Princeton University, and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensively, and became interested in folklore and folk linguistics, publishing books and articles on American and European languages and folk traditions. By the end of his life shortly after the turn of the century, Leland had worked in a wide variety of trades, achieved recognition as an author of the comedic Hans Breitmann Ballads, fought in two conflicts, and had written what was to become a primary source text for Neopaganism half a century later, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.

Life

Leland was born to Charles Leland, a commission merchant, and Charlotte Godfrey August 15, 1824 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Shortly after his birth, Leland's nurse took the child to the family attic and performed a ritual on him involving a Bible, a key, a knife, lighted candles, money and salt to ensure a long life as a "scholar and a wizard", a fact which Leland's biographers have commented upon as foreshadowing his interest in folk traditions and magic.

Charles Godfrey Leland's early education was in the United States, and he attended college at Princeton University. During his schooling, Leland studied languages, wrote poetry, and pursued a variety of other interests, including hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and the writings of Rabelais and Villon. After college, Leland continued his studies in Heidelberg and Munich. In 1848 Leland attended the Sorbonne, and was involved in the Revolutions of 1848 in France, fighting at consructed barricades against the King's soldiers as a captain in the revolution.

Leland returned to America after the money given to him by his father for travel had run out, and passed the bar in Pennsylvania. Instead of practicing law, he instead began a career in journalism. As a journalist, Leland wrote for The Illustrated News in New York, the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia and eventually took on editorial duties for Graham's Magazine, and the Philadelphia Press. In 1856 Leland married Eliza Bella "Isabel" Fisher.

Leland was also an editor for the Continental Monthly, a pro-Union Army publication. He enlisted in the Union Army in 1863, and fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. Leland coined the term "emancipation" as an alternative to "abolition" to refer to the anti-slavery position.

Leland returned to Europe in 1869, and travelled widely, eventually settling in London. In his travels, he made a study of the Gypsies, on whom he wrote more than one book. Leland began to publish a number of books on ethnography, folklore and language. His fame during his lifetime rested chiefly on his comic Hans Breitmann Ballads (1871), written in a combination of broken English and German (not to be confused, as it often has been, with Pennsylvania German). His writings on Algonquian and gypsy culture were part of the contemporary interest in pagan and Aryan traditions. He erroneously claimed to have discovered 'the fifth Celtic tongue': the form of Cant, spoken among Irish Travellers. He named it Shelta. Leland became president of the English Gypsy-Lore Society in 1888. Eleven years later Godfrey produced Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, reportedly containing the traditional beliefs of Italian witchcraft as conveyed to Leland in a manuscript provided by a woman named Maddalena, who Leland refers to as his "witch informant."

What is seldom mentioned in contemporary accounts of Leland's career is an aspect of his life which he viewed as of great importance, writing in his memoirs, "The story of what is to me by far the most interesting period of my life remains to be written. This embraces an account of my labour for many years in introducing Industrial Art as a branch of education in schools[.]" He was involved in a series of books on industrial arts (and crafts) including a title he co-authored in 1876 with Thomas Bolas, entitled "Pyrography or burnt-wood etching," which was revised by Frank H Ball, G J Fowler in 1900. He was, more significantly, the founder and first director of the Public Industrial Art School of Philadelphia. This school is today known as Philadelphia University of the Arts.

Influence

In more recent times his writings on pagan and Aryan traditions have eclipsed the now largely forgotten Breitmann ballads, influencing the development of Wicca and modern Neo-paganism. The most influential of these books is Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Aradia's accuracy has been disputed, and used by others as a study of witch lore in 19th century Italy.

Leland was also an important influence on the Arts and Crafts movement. He had established a school to teach crafts to disadvantaged children in Philadelphia, which became widely known when it was praised by Oscar Wilde. Wilde later wrote to Leland he would be "recognised and honoured as one of the great pioneers and leaders of the art of the future. The Home Arts and Industries Association was founded in imitation of this initiative.

Select bibliography

Leland's comical Hans Breitmann Ballads were his biggest success as an author during his life, but most of his books dealt with the traditions and languages of the peoples that he studied. He is best known today for Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, one of his three books on Italian folk traditions.

1855: Meister Karl's Sketch-book
1864: Legends of Birds
1871: Hans Breitmann Ballads
1872: Pidgin-English Sing-Song
1873: The English Gipsies
1879: Johnnykin and the Goblins
1882: The Gypsies
1884: Algonquin Legends
1891: Gyspsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling
1892: The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria
1892: Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition
1896: Legends of Florence Collected from the People (2 vols.)
1899: Unpublished Legends of Virgil
1899: Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches
1899: Have You a Strong Will?
1901: Legends of Virgil
1902: Flaxius, or Leaves from the Life of an Immortal

Unknown date: Leather Work, A Practical Manual for Learners by Charles G. Leland, late director of the Public Industrial Art School of Philadelphia, with many illustrations and original designs by the author. 3rd edition published 1925, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd.