Folklore

I

Introduction

Folklore, general term for the verbal, spiritual, and material aspects of any culture that are transmitted orally, by observation, or by imitation. People sharing a culture may have in common an occupation, language, ethnicity, age, or geographical location. This body of traditional material is preserved and passed on from generation to generation, with constant variations shaped by memory, immediate need or purpose, and degree of individual talent. The word folklore was coined in 1846 by the English antiquary William John Thoms to replace the term popular antiquities.

II

Folklore and Popular Culture

Folklore scholars today distinguish between true folklore and material such as the much-repeated anecdote about George Washington and the cherry tree, the songs of the American composers Stephen Collins Foster and Irving Berlin, the tales about the legendary American lumberjack Paul Bunyan, or syndicated comic strips. Such things, commonly referred to by the media as part of the folk heritage, are defined by some folklorists as popular lore. Folk tradition and popular tradition do intermingle, however. Popular forms continually draw on genuine folklore forms for inspiration, and popular lore occasionally becomes so widely known that folk groups adapt it to their own oral tradition.

III

Folklore Sources and Categories

Folklorists today also realize that folklore is not restricted to rural communities but may commonly be found in cities, and that, rather than dying out, it is still part of the learning of all groups from family units to nations, albeit changing in form and function. Folklore as a creative activity and as a body of unscrutinized or unverifiable assertions and beliefs has not vanished. The various research aims and procedures of anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, linguists, and literary scholars have modified considerably the former tendency to look upon folk literature and folk customs either as quaint and romantic or as somehow inferior. Folklore has come to be regarded as part of the human learning process and an important source of information about the history of human life.

Folklore materials may be roughly classified into five general areas: ideas and beliefs, traditions, narratives, folk sayings, and the folk arts.

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Folk beliefs include ideas about the whole range of human concerns, from the reasons and cures for diseases to speculation concerning life after death. This category therefore includes folkloristic beliefs (superstitions), magic, divination, witchcraft, and apparitions such as ghosts and fantastic mythological creatures. The second classification, that of traditions, includes material dealing with festival customs, games, and dances; cookery and costume might also be included, by extension (see Folk Dance; Festivals and Feasts). The third category, narratives, includes the ballad and the various forms of folktales and folk music, all of which may be based in part on real characters or historical events. The category of folk sayings includes proverbs and nursery rhymes, verbal charms, and riddles. Folk arts, the fifth and only nonverbal category, covers any form of art, generally created anonymously among a particular people, shaped by and expressing the character of their community life (see Folk Art).

IV

Early Folklore Studies

The formal study of folklore began about 300 years ago. One of the earliest books to take up the subject was Traité des superstitions (Treatise on Superstitions, 1679), by the French satirist Jean Baptiste Thiers. Miscellanies (1696), by the English antiquary John Aubrey, dealing with popular beliefs and customs regarding such things as omens, dreams, second sight, and ghosts, was another early work.

The first important work on the general subject of folklore was Antiquitates Vulgares; or, The Antiquities of the Common People (1725), by the British clergyman and antiquary Henry Bourne, which was largely an account of popular customs in connection with religious festivals. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (3 volumes, 1765), edited by the English poet, antiquary, and bishop Thomas Percy, was an important collection of English and Scottish ballads. In 1777 the British clergyman and antiquary John Brand published Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. The book cataloged and described the origins of many customs and became the standard British work on folklore.

In Germany, the philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder and the philologists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm did pioneer work in folklore. Herder published a valuable collection of German folk songs in 1778; the Grimm brothers compiled the collection of folktales Household Tales (2 volumes, 1812-1815; translated 1884).

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