Alex Helm

Helm was born in Burnley, Lancashire, in 1920, becoming interested in folk dancing whilst attending Burnley Grammar School.^[2] Helm was taught to dance by Irene Fisher, who was involved with the local branch of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.^[3]

He trained to become a teacher at St John's Teacher-training College, York.^[2] After finishing teacher training, Helm joined the army,^[3] where during the Second World War he served in the Indian Army Ordnance Corps, reaching the rank of Major.^[4] While posted in India, Helm met his future wife, Mehr Suntook ("Sunny"). He served in India until it became independent in 1947, whereupon he returned to England.^[3]

After the war, Helm taught at Northumberland Heath Secondary School, Erith. While in Erith, Helm married, and his first child was born.^[3] In 1949 he moved to Danesford School, an approved school in Congleton, Cheshire.^[5] His second child was born in 1953. In 1968 he was made deputy headmaster at Danesford. He was also part of a Home Office committee on approved schools.^[3]

Helm began to take an interest in the history of dances and dramatic traditions of Lancashire and Cheshire, in part influenced by Margaret Dean-Smith, Librarian of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), with whom Helm had helped to sort and index the Society's papers. Within a year of his move to Cheshire he had published research on ‘The Cheshire Soul-caking Play’,^[6] a type of folk play that had been little studied.

During this period Helm, now a member of the Manchester Morris Men troupe, also began to research Lancastrian Morris traditions.^[7]

Helm joined the Folklore Society in 1954, and from 1958 was on the society's council.^[3] He soon made a study of the papers of T. F. Ordish, held in the collections of the Society.^[8] Ordish, a 19th-century folklorist who specialised on mummers' plays, had planned – but never completed – a monograph on British folk drama.^[2]

Inspired by this work, Helm's research expanded from folk dance and folk play into creating a geographical index of British seasonal customs, of which folk dance and folk play would form sections. For this project he worked with a group of researchers - E. C. Cawte,^[9] Norman Peacock and Roger Marriott. The group co-authored 'A Geographical Index of the Ceremonial Dance in Great Britain', which was published as two journal articles in 1960^[10] and 1961^[11] and English Ritual Drama: A Geographical Index in 1967.^[12]

English Ritual Drama is now seen as a seminal work, being the "first systematic attempt to list every known occurrence of the folk play in Britain and to provide a source for each location".^[3]

In 1968 Helm was awarded the Coote Lake Medal of the Folklore Society, for "outstanding research and scholarship" in the field of Folklore Studies. Whilst never a field collector, he was hailed for his "great ability to interest and stimulate others, and to guide them with his deep and growing knowledge".^[4]

Helm died in 1970: his life and work being "cut short as he reached his peak".^[4] His collaborator E. C. Cawte dedicated his 1978 monograph Ritual Animal Disguise to Helm.^[3]

Helm had a considerable influence on later customs researchers in England, particularly through the geographic approach he advocated. His argument that folk dance and folk play should be studied as rituals or customs - as opposed to the literary approach adopted by earlier scholars like E. K. Chambers - became the adopted model (although one criticised by later researchers).^[1][3]

Helm's research papers - including correspondence, manuscript notebooks and working papers for his research on seasonal customs - are held at University College London.^[5][13]

• Helm, Alex (1950). "The Cheshire Soul-Caking Play". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 6 (2): 45–50. ISSN 0071-0563
• Helm, Alex (1954). "The Rushcart and the North-Western Morris". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 7 (3): 172–179. ISSN 0071-0563
• Helm, Alex (1955-09-01). "Report on the Ordish Papers". Folklore. 66 (3): 360–362. doi:10.1080/0015587X.1955.9717489 ISSN 0015-587X
• Cawte, E. C.; Helm, Alex; Marriott, R. J.; Peacock, N. (1960). "A Geographical Index of the Ceremonial Dance in Great Britain: Part One". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 9 (1): ii–41. ISSN 0071-0563
• Cawte, E. C.; Helm, Alex; Peacock, N. (1961). "A Geographical Index of the Ceremonial Dance in Great Britain: Addenda and Corrigenda". Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 9 (2): 93–95. ISSN 0071-0563
• Helm, Alex (1965-06-01). "In Comes I, St George". Folklore. 76 (2): 118–136. doi:10.1080/0015587X.1965.9716997 ISSN 0015-587X
• Cawte, E. C; Helm, Alex; Peacock, N (1967). English ritual drama: a geographical index,. London: Folk-lore Society. ISBN 978-0-903515-01-6 OCLC 124592
• Helm, Alex (1981). The English mummers' play: With a foreword by N. Peacock and E.C. Cawte. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Brewer. ISBN 978-0-85991-067-5 OCLC 633313812