He was rector of High Hurst Wood, Sussex, from 1872 to 1874,[1] from where he published his Handbook of Weather Folk-Lore[2] which also included folklore and mythology relating to elements of nature and a short chapter on birds.
In 1874 he was presented to the parish of St Luke's, Old Charlton, near Greenwich, east of London, where he remained until 1908 and where he prepared the manuscript for his seminal book on the Provincial Names and Folk-Lore of British Birds (1885-6).
[15] Swainson drew on sources from as far afield as Norway, Iceland, France, Germany, and Russia; relied on the great ornithological histories of Bewick and Yarrell; referred to the poetry of John Clare and the works of Shakespeare; drew examples from the lives of the saints and the legends of the Middle Ages; and referred widely to local English, Scottish and Irish glossaries and collections or provincial names for the birds.
[3] Many proverbs, songs and sayings illuminate and illustrate the natural history, which in turn gives substance and meaning to the folklore and rituals he describes.
Some anonymous criticisms in these reviews were taken up by Harry Kirke Swann and to some extent addressed in his own Dictionary; mainly, the possibility of dialect words having been omitted, the inclusion of "book-names", the lack of precise reference to Yarrell's 4th edition (edited by Alfred Newton and Howard Saunders in 1885), and the lack of etymological consistency, in that the root or meaning of all names are not worked out to their origins.
All 80 published volumes of the Society would be included in The English Dialect Dictionary, and its compiler, Joseph Wright, a self-taught philologist, would involve a nationwide network of almost a thousand volunteers to assist and contribute to this massive cultural undertaking.
[17] Swainson's work on weather-lore and on provincial birds' names and folk-lore was included in the massive undertaking which became The English Dialect Dictionary, published in six volumes between 1898 and 1905.
Walter William Skeat also references Swainson's work in his "Magic Rites Connected With The Several Departments of Nature", a chapter in the book "Malay Magic: Being an Introduction to The Folklore and Popular Religion of the Malay Peninsula", published in 1900, where he quotes Swainson's research on the nightjar's connection to the Gabriel Hounds or Gabble Ratchet myths.
[18] Charles Swainson's original and compendious research formed the foundation of several subsequent major works of ornithological literature, including Harry Kirke Swann's A Dictionary of English and Folk-Names of British Birds; with their History, Meaning and First Usage, and the Folk-Lore, Weather-Lore, Legends Etc Relating to the More Familiar Species.
[16] Swann pays tribute to Charles Swainson in the first part of his introduction, and subsequently mentions other major works he has made use of, from Turner (1544) to Ray and Willughby (1678).
"[18] Lockwood also references Swainson's work in his etymological research, for example in "The Philology of 'Auk' and related matters" in the journal Neuephilologische Mitteilungen vol.