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.

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).

V.

Modern Folklore Scholarship

The collection and analysis of folklore increasingly occupied the attention of scholars in Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Numerous journals and societies devoted to the recording and preservation of the folk heritage were founded. The research of the 19th-century German philologist and Sanskrit scholar Theodor Benfey formed the basis for all later comparative studies in the field. His views were espoused by such scholars as the Scottish classicist and folklorist Andrew Lang, who wrote Custom and Myth (1884) and Myth, Literature and Religion (2 volumes, 1887), and the British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough (1890; expanded to 13 volumes, 1915). Their works were landmarks of the so-called anthropological school of folklore study.

As early as 1905 the Danish Folklore Archives used the Edison phonograph to record songs from Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Among a number of Scandinavian scholars prominent in the field of folklore was the Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne, who helped to develop procedures for ascertaining the component elements, place of origin, and approximate date of popular narratives. Aarne created in 1910 an important system of folktale indexing, later translated and enlarged by the American folklorist Stith Thompson in The Types of the Folk Tale (1928; 1961). See Folktales.

Significant folklore studies written in the United States include English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 volumes, 1882-1898) by Francis James Child; Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (1927) by Roger Sherman Loomis; The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) by Franz Boas; and Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (6 volumes, 1932-1937; enlarged edition, 1955-1958), perhaps the most important work in the folktale field. A popular comprehensive reference source is Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend (revised 1972).

VI.

Folklore Societies and Study Facilities

Folklore societies in Europe and the United States have fostered the collecting (by tape recording and photography) and classifying of extensive archives of folklore materials. These scholarly societies, which have helped to make the study of folklore a valuable tool in anthropological, ethnological, and psychological research, as well as a burgeoning field in its own right, include the English Folklore Society, founded in 1878; the French Société des Traditions Populaires, which in 1886 began the publication of the journal Revue des Traditions Populaires; and the American Folklore Society, founded in 1888, which through its publication Journal of American Folklore and through investigations, studies, and publications by its branch groups has extensively promoted general knowledge of, and interest in, all aspects of American folklore.

Facilities for field collection of folklore and for independent research exist at centers such as the Folklore Institute of Indiana University, founded in 1963; in addition, the institute maintains a folklore library. Since 1946 the Library of Congress has maintained an archive of recorded material and has provided equipment for field recording to other institutions; it also has exchange agreements with folklore centers throughout the world.

Also of importance is the international organization Folklore Fellows, founded in 1907, with headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. Through a series of publications, Folklore Fellows Communications, the organization has brought out more than 200 publications, including almost 40 indexes. The International Society for Folk-Narrative Research, founded in 1959, with headquarters in Åbo (Turku), Finland, has also helped advance the study of comparative folklore.