A good way in, particularly for rural England, is James Obelkevich,
_Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825-1875_ (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1976). Lots of attention to "superstition." (Obelkevich is also
the author of my favorite throw-away line: commenting on the way the
practitioners of rural paganism gave a more satisfying explanation of the
unexplainable than did parish priests, he writes (p. 304), "wise men
rushed in where Anglicans feared to tread...")
Another book in the same popular religion vein, though it also moves into
the 20th century, is David Clark, _Between pulpit and pew: Folk religion
in a North Yorkshire fishing village_ (Cambridge UP, 1982).
Charlie Wallace
Willamette University
Salem, OR