![Pieter Brueghel the Elder - The Dutch Proverbs - Google Art Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Pieter_Brueghel_the_Elder_-_The_Dutch_Proverbs_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the
tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
s common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes
oral tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...
s such as
tales
Tales may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Tales'' (album), a 1995 album by Marcus Miller
* ''Tales'' (film), a 2014 Iranian film
* ''Tales'' (TV series), an American television series
* ''Tales'' (video game), a 2016 point-and-click adventure ...
, legends,
proverbs
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phra ...
and
jokes
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...
. They include
material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...
, ranging from traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also includes
customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, the forms and rituals of celebrations such as
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...
and weddings,
folk dances and
initiation rites
A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite ...
. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a
folklore artifact or
traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the
fine arts
In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...
. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called
folklore studies
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
or folkloristics, and it can be explored at undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. levels.
Overview
![Serbian Folk Group, Music and Costume](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Serbian_Folk_Group%2C_Music_and_Costume.jpg)
The word ''folklore'', a compound of ''folk'' and ''lore'', was coined in 1846 by the Englishman
William Thoms
William John Thoms (16 November 1803 – 15 August 1885) was a British writer credited with coining the term "folklore" in 1846. Thoms's investigation of folklore and myth led to a later career of debunking longevity myths, and he was a pioneer ...
, who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, ''
lore
Lore may refer to:
* Folklore, acquired knowledge or traditional beliefs
* Oral lore or oral tradition, orally conveyed cultural knowledge and traditions
Places
* Loré, former French commune
* Loré (East Timor), a city and subdistrict in Lau ...
'', comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group, frequently passed along by word of mouth.
The concept of ''
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Folk Plus or Fol ...
'' has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, ''folk'' applied only to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of ''folk'' is a social group that includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in
American folklore
American folklore encompasses the folklores that have evolved in the present-day United States since Europeans arrived in the 16th century. While it contains much in the way of Native American tradition, it is not wholly identical to the tribal ...
or to a
single family." This expanded social definition of ''folk'' supports a broader view of the material, i.e. the lore, considered to be ''folklore artifacts''. These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore is no longer considered to be limited to that which is old or obsolete. These
folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic, it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists,
computer programmers
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
".
In direct contrast to
high culture
High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society cons ...
, where any single work of a named artist is protected by
copyright law
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
, folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group.
Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the ''significance'' of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can however shift and morph, for example: the
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages, and even gives rise to its own set of
urban legends
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on M ...
were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as
tooth brushing
Tooth brushing is the act of scrubbing teeth with a toothbrush, usually equipped with toothpaste. Interdental cleaning (with floss or an interdental brush) can be useful with tooth brushing, and together these two activities are the primary mean ...
, which is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics, the study of folklore.
With an increasingly theoretical sophistication of the
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
s, it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated, it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them".
Origin and development of folklore studies
Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during the period of romantic nationalism, in Europe. A particular figure in this development was
Johann Gottfried von Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, ''Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism.
Biography
Born in Mohrung ...
, whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in locale. After the German states were invaded by
Napoleonic France
The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire (; Latin: ) after 1809, also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Eur ...
, Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions, and used them in their process of
nation building
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the State (polity), state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long r ...
. This process was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors.
Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th century European scholars, who were contrasting
tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
with the newly developing
modernity
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the " ...
. Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residue and survivals of the past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The "
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', originally known as the ''Children's and Household Tales'' (german: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, lead=yes, ), is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first publis ...
" of the
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
(first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By the turn into the 20th century the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by
Franz Boas
Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
and
Ruth Benedict
Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social Re ...
, chose to consider
Native American cultures in their research, and included the totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with
cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
and
ethnology
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural anthropology, cultural, social anthropolo ...
, using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as a whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself.
The term ''folkloristics'', along with the alternative name ''folklore studies'',
[The word ''folkloristics'' is favored by Alan Dundes, and used in the title of his publication ; the term ''folklore studies'' is defined and used by ]Simon Bronner
Simon J. Bronner (born April 7, 1954 in Haifa, Israel) is an American folklorist, ethnologist, historian, sociologist, educator, college dean, and author.
Life and career
Bronner's parents were Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors who immigrated ...
, see . became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the
folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with the
Bicentennial Celebration, folkloristics in the United States came of age.
"… olklifemeans the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction."
Added to the extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and
cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by soci ...
of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as a problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the
Smithsonian Folklife Festival
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, launched in 1967, is an international exhibition of living cultural heritage presented annually in the summer in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is held on the National Mall for two weeks around the Fo ...
and many other
folklife fests around the country.
There are numerous other definitions. According to
William Bascom
__NOTOC__
William R. Bascom (May 23, 1912 – September 11, 1981) was an award-winning American folklorist, anthropologist, and museum director. He was a specialist in the art and culture of West Africa and the African Diaspora, especially the Yo ...
major article on the topic there are "four functions to folklore":
*Folklore lets people escape from repressions imposed upon them by society.
*Folklore validates culture, justifying its rituals and institutions to those who perform and observe them.
*Folklore is a pedagogic device which reinforces morals and values and builds wit.
*Folklore is a means of applying
social pressure
Peer pressure is the direct or indirect influence on peers, i.e., members of social groups with similar interests, experiences, or social statuses. Members of a peer group are more likely to influence a person's beliefs, values, and behavior. A g ...
and exercising
social control.
Definition of "folk"
![Folklore theater in Mansoura](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Folklore_theater_in_Mansoura.jpg)
The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the
original term "folklore", was characterized by being rural, illiterate and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with the rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society.
Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the
social sciences
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soci ...
, folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s it was understood that
social groups
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
, i.e. folk groups, were all around us; each individual is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique
family folklore
Family folklore is the branch of folkloristics concerned with the study and use of folklore and traditional culture transmitted within an individual family group. This includes craft goods produced by family members or memorabilia that have been ...
. As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore."
In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group.
This folklore can include jokes, sayings and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge is used to confirm and re-inforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. Or it can be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folkdance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in the study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group.
Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this is found in an issue of the ''
Journal of American Folklore
The ''Journal of American Folklore'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Folklore Society. Since 2003, this has been done on its behalf by the University of Illinois Press. The journal has been published since the society' ...
'', published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective.
[Contributors of this issue were, among others, Claire Farrer, Joan N. Radner, Susan Lanser, Elaine Lawless, and Jeannie B. Thomas.] Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were
non-traditional families, occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations.
Folklore genres
![UAE Folk Dance- Khaliji](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/UAE_Folk_Dance-_Khaliji.jpg)
Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For the most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects (material folklore), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs (verbal folklore), and beliefs and ways of doing things (customary folklore). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for
children's folklore
Childlore is the folklore or folk culture of children and young people. It includes, for example, rhymes and games played in the school playground. The best known researchers of the field were Iona and Peter Opie.
Overview
The subject matter of ...
and games (childlore), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets.
Each of these genres and their subtypes is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other.
That said, each artifact is unique; in fact one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products and any variations are considered mistakes. It is however just this required variation that makes identification and classification of the defining features a challenge. And while this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling, and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves.
Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in the self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table, and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties which are not generally played at other times. Adding to the complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of the individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as
signifiers of the event.
Verbal tradition
![Prince Salim (the future Jahangir) and his legendary illicit love](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Prince_Salim_%28the_future_Jahangir%29_and_his_legendary_illicit_love.jpg)
The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns."
Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For
narrative types by definition have consistent structure, and follow an existing model in their narrative form.
Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (russian: Владимир Яковлевич Пропп; – 22 August 1970) was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irredu ...
first defined a uniform structure in Russian fairy tales in his groundbreaking monograph ''Morphology of the Folktale'', published in Russian in 1928. See As just one simple example, in English the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...
. It might be one you've already heard, but it might be one that the speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song
Old MacDonald Had a Farm
"Old MacDonald Had a Farm" (sometimes shortened to Old MacDonald) is a traditional children's song and nursery rhyme about a farmer and the various animals he keeps. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise ...
, where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals.
Verbal folklore was the
original folklore, the artifacts defined by
William Thoms
William John Thoms (16 November 1803 – 15 August 1885) was a British writer credited with coining the term "folklore" in 1846. Thoms's investigation of folklore and myth led to a later career of debunking longevity myths, and he was a pioneer ...
as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published a first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the
Aarne–Thompson classification system by
Stith Thompson
Stith Thompson (March 7, 1885 – January 10, 1976) was an American folklorist: he has been described as "America's most important folklorist".
He is the "Thompson" of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, which indexes folktales by type, and the ...
and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups and epochs, giving rise to the
Historic–Geographic Method, a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century.
When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it is still transmitted orally and indeed continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate.
Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore.
*
Aloha
''Aloha'' ( , ) is the Hawaiian language, Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy, that is commonly used as a simple greeting but has a deeper cultural and spiritual significance to native Hawaiians, for whom the term is u ...
*
Ballads
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
*
Blessing
In religion, a blessing (also used to refer to bestowing of such) is the impartation of something with grace, holiness, spiritual redemption, or divine will.
Etymology and Germanic paganism
The modern English language term ''bless'' likely ...
s
*
Bluegrass
*
Chants
A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes ...
*
Charms
Charm may refer to:
Social science
* Charisma, a person or thing's pronounced ability to attract others
* Superficial charm, flattery, telling people what they want to hear
Science and technology
* Charm quark, a type of elementary particle
* Cha ...
*
Cinderella
"Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...
*
Country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
*
Cowboy poetry
Cowboy poetry is a form of poetry that grew from a tradition of cowboys telling stories.
Authorship
Contrary to common belief, cowboy poetry does not actually have to be written by cowboys, though adherents would claim that authors should have so ...
*
Creation stories
A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...
*
Curses
A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, ...
*
English similes
*
Epic poetry
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
*
Fable
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mo ...
*
Fairy tale
A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...
*
Folk belief
In folkloristics, folk belief or folk-belief is a broad genre of folklore that is often expressed in narratives, customs, rituals, foodways, proverbs, and rhymes. It also includes a wide variety of behaviors, expressions, and beliefs. Examples of c ...
*
Folk etymologies
Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
*
Folk metaphors
*
Folk poetry
Folk poetry (sometimes referred to as ''poetry in action'') is poetry that is part of a society's folklore, usually part of their oral tradition. When sung, folk poetry becomes a folk song.
Description
Folk poetry in general has several characteri ...
*
Folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
*
Folksongs
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has be ...
*
Folk speech
* Folktales of
oral tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...
*
Ghostlore
Ghostlore or ghost-lore is a genre of folklore concerning ghosts. Ghostlore occurs throughout recorded history, including contemporary contexts.
History
The first known recorded story to feature a haunted house is often regarded by folklore sch ...
*
Greetings
Greeting is an act of communication in which human beings intentionally make their presence known to each other, to show attention to, and to suggest a type of relationship (usually cordial) or social status (formal or informal) between indiv ...
*
Hog-calling
Hog calling, or pig calling, is the art of making a call to encourage pigs to approach the caller. Competitions in hog calling are held.
Calls
To attract pigs (or family), the calls are based on four strategies: a male call to encourage terri ...
*
Insults
An insult is an expression or statement (or sometimes behavior) which is disrespectful or scornful. Insults may be intentional or accidental. An insult may be factual, but at the same time pejorative, such as the word "inbred".
Jocular exch ...
*
Jokes
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...
*
Keening
Keening (Irish: Caointeoireacht) is a traditional form of vocal lament for the dead in the Gaelic Celtic tradition, known to have taken place in Ireland and Scotland. Keening, which can be seen as a form of sean-nós singing, was performed in th ...
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Latrinalia
Latrinalia is a type of deliberately inscribed or etched marking made on latrines; that is, bathrooms or lavatory walls. It can take the form of art, drawings, or words, including poetry and personal reflections. Other types of latrinalia include ...
*
Legend
A legend is a Folklore genre, genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human valu ...
s
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Limericks
A limerick ( ) is a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude, in five-line, predominantly trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and ...
*
Lullabies
A lullaby (), or cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowled ...
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Myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...
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Oaths
Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to gi ...
*
Leave-taking formulas
*
Fakelore
Invented traditions are cultural practices that are presented or perceived as traditional, arising from the people starting in the distant past, but which in fact are relatively recent and often even consciously invented by identifiable historical ...
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Place names
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
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Prayers at bedtime
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Proverb
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phra ...
s
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Retorts
In a chemistry laboratory, a retort is a device used for distillation or dry distillation of substances. It consists of a spherical vessel with a long downward-pointing neck. The liquid to be distilled is placed in the vessel and heated. The n ...
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Riddle
A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requir ...
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Roasts
Roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat where hot air covers the food, cooking it evenly on all sides with temperatures of at least from an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting can enhance the flavor through caramelization ...
*
Sagas
is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to the Play ...
*
Sea shanties
A sea shanty, chantey, or chanty () is a genre of traditional Folk music, folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large Merchant vessel, merchant Sailing ship, sailing vessels. The term ''shanty ...
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Street vendors
A hawker is a vendor of merchandise that can be easily transported; the term is roughly synonymous with costermonger or peddler. In most places where the term is used, a hawker sells inexpensive goods, handicrafts, or food items. Whether stationa ...
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Superstition
A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and ...
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Tall tale
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some tall tales are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories ("the fish that got away") such as, "That fish was so big, why I tell ya', it n ...
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Taunts
*
Toasts
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Tongue-twisters
A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. Additionally, they can be used as exercises to improve pronunciation and fluency. Some tongue twisters p ...
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Urban legends
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
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Word games
Word games (also called word game puzzles or word search games) are spoken, board, or video games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.
Word games are generally used as a source of entertainment, but can add ...
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Yodeling
Yodeling (also jodeling) is a form of singing which involves repeated and rapid changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register (or "chest voice") and the high-pitch head register or falsetto. The English word ''yodel'' is derived from the ...
Material culture
![Horse and Sulky weathervane - SAAM - DSC00796](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Horse_and_Sulky_weathervane_-_SAAM_-_DSC00796.JPG)
The genre of
material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...
includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at the next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as
dreidel
A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl ( ; yi, דרײדל, dreydl, plural: ''dreydlech''; he, סביבון, sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gamb ...
s or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. …
hey are
Hey or Hey! may refer to:
Music
* Hey (band), a Polish rock band
Albums
* Hey (Andreas Bourani album), ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014
* Hey! (Julio Iglesias album), ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the ti ...
transmitted across the generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation"
that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration.
In Europe, prior to the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these
handicrafts
A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...
can still be found all around us, with possibly a shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftsmen and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsman.
Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the
fine
Fine may refer to:
Characters
* Sylvia Fine (''The Nanny''), Fran's mother on ''The Nanny''
* Officer Fine, a character in ''Tales from the Crypt'', played by Vincent Spano
Legal terms
* Fine (penalty), money to be paid as punishment for an offe ...
or
applied arts
The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univers ...
and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as
folk art
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...
, characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within a community.
Henry Glassie Henry Glassie (born 24 March 1941) College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, has done fieldwork on five continents and written books on the full range of folkloristic interest, from drama, song, and story to craft, art, and archi ...
, a distinguished folklorist studying technology in cultural context, notes that in Turkish one word, sanat, refers to all objects, not distinguishing between art and craft. The latter distinction, Glassie emphasizes, is not based on medium but on social class. This raises the question as to the difference between arts and crafts; is the difference found merely in the labeling?
Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the
living museum
A living museum, also known as a living history museum, is a type of museum which recreates historical settings to simulate a past time period, providing visitors with an experiential interpretation of history. It is a type of museum that recr ...
has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how the items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving
heritage industry.
This list represents just a small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture.
*
Autograph book
An autograph book is a book for collecting the autographs of others. Traditionally they were exchanged among friends, colleagues, and classmates to fill with poems, drawings, personal messages, small pieces of verse, and other mementos. Their ...
s
*
Bunad
''Bunad'' (, plural: ''bunader''/''bunadar'') is a Norwegian umbrella term encompassing, in its broadest sense, a range of both traditional rural clothes (mostly dating to the 18th and 19th centuries) as well as modern 20th-century folk costumes ...
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Embroidery
Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on c ...
*
Folk art
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...
*
Folk costume
A folk costume (also regional costume, national costume, traditional garment, or traditional regalia) expresses an identity through costume, which is usually associated with a geographic area or a period of time in history. It can also indicat ...
*
Folk medicines
*
Food recipes and presentation
*
Foodways
In social science, foodways are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. ''Foodways'' often refers to the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history.
Definition and historical ...
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Common handicrafts
*
Handmade toys
*
Haystacks
*
Hex signs
Hex signs are a form of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, related to fraktur, found in the Fancy Dutch tradition in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Barn paintings, usually in the form of "stars in circles", began to appear on the landscape in the early 1 ...
*
Decorative ironworks
*
Pottery
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...
*
Quilting
Quilting is the term given to the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. A ...
*
Stone sculpting
*
Tipis
A tipi , often called a lodge in English, is a conical tent, historically made of animal hides or pelts, and in more recent generations of canvas, stretched on a framework of wooden poles. The word is Siouan, and in use in Dakhótiyapi, Lakȟó ...
*
Traditional fences
*
Vernacular architecture
Vernacular architecture is building done outside any academic tradition, and without professional guidance. This category encompasses a wide range and variety of building types, with differing methods of construction, from around the world, bo ...
*
Weather vane
A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...
s
*
Woodworking
Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making (cabinetry and furniture), wood carving, woodworking joints, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning.
History
Along with Rock (geology), stone, clay and animal parts, ...
Customs
Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things"
A custom can be a
single gesture, such as
thumbs down
A thumb signal, usually described as a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, is a common hand gesture achieved by a closed fist held with the thumb extended upward or downward in approval or disapproval, respectively. These gestures have become metaphors i ...
or a
handshake
A handshake is a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other's like hands, in most cases accompanied by a brief up-and-down movement of the grasped hands. Customs surrounding handshakes a ...
. It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in a child's birthday party, including verbal lore (
Happy Birthday song), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games (
Musical chairs
Musical chairs, also known as Trip to Jerusalem, is a game of elimination involving players, chairs, and music. It is a staple of many parties worldwide.
Gameplay
A set of chairs is arranged with one fewer chair than the number of players ...
) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration, a scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group.
Folklorists divide customs into several different categories.
A custom can be a seasonal celebration, such as
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...
or
New Year's. It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are
Carnival in Cologne or
Mardi Gras in New Orleans
The holiday of Mardi Gras is celebrated in all of Louisiana, including the city of New Orleans. Celebrations are concentrated for about two weeks before and through Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday (the start of lent in the Western C ...
. This category also includes the
Smithsonian Folklife Festival
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, launched in 1967, is an international exhibition of living cultural heritage presented annually in the summer in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is held on the National Mall for two weeks around the Fo ...
celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs. Walking under a ladder is just one of many
symbols considered unlucky. Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the
traditions of sailors or
lumberjacks
Lumberjacks are mostly North American workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to loggers in the era (before 1945 in the Uni ...
.
[The folklorist ]Archie Green
Archie Green (June 29, 1917 – March 22, 2009) was an American folklorist specializing in laborlore (defined as the special folklore of workers) and American folk music. Devoted to understanding vernacular culture, he gathered and commente ...
specialized in workers' traditions and the lore of labor groups. The area of
ecclesiastical folklore, which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by the established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice
Folklore customshas an amazing selection of beautiful an
unique dressesfor women that are perfect for an
occasionall over the world.
Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in the custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the
handkerchief code
The handkerchief code (also known as the hanky code, the bandana code, and flagging) is a system of color-coded cloth handkerchief or bandanas for non-verbally communicating one's interests in sexual activities and fetishes. The color of the han ...
sometimes used in the gay community or the
initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The
St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across the continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group.
These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of
public folklorists, who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With a swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these
community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from the business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole.
This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore.
*
Amish
The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches ...
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Barn raising
A barn raising, also historically called a raising bee or rearing in the U.K., is a collective action of a community, in which a barn for one of the members is built or rebuilt collectively by members of the community. Barn raising was particular ...
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Birthday
A birthday is the anniversary of the birth of a person, or figuratively of an institution. Birthdays of people are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with birthday gifts, birthday cards, a birthday party, or a rite of passage.
Many relig ...
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Cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black Slavery in the United States, slave plantations before and after End ...
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Cat's cradle
Cat's cradle is a game involving the creation of various string figures between the fingers, either individually or by passing a loop of string back and forth between two or more players. The true origin of the name is debated, though the fi ...
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Chaharshanbe Suri
Chaharshanbeh Suri or Charshanba Suri ( fa, چهارشنبهسوری, Čahāršanbe suri; ), is an Iranian festival of the fire dance celebrated on the eve of the last Wednesday of the year. It is the first festivity of the Nowruz Celebratio ...
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Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...
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Crossed fingers
To cross one's fingers is a hand gesture commonly used to wish for luck. Occasionally it is interpreted as an attempt to implore God for protection.''Orange Coast Magazine''. Emmis Communications. May 1990. pg. 177. "In early Christian days, a ...
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Folk dance
*
Folk drama
Folk plays such as Hoodening, Guising, Mummers Play and Soul Caking are generally verse sketches performed in countryside pubs in European countries, private houses or the open air, at set times of the year such as the Winter or Summer solstices ...
*
Folk medicine
Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous medicine or folk medicine) comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies, including indigenous peoples, before the ...
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Giving the finger
*
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
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Hoodening
Hoodening (), also spelled ''hodening'' and ''oodening'', is a folk custom found in Kent, a county in south-eastern England. The tradition entails the use of a wooden hobby horse known as a hooden horse that is mounted on a pole and carried by ...
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Gestures
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...
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Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day ( pdc, Grund'sau dåk, , , ; Nova Scotia: Daks Day) is a popular North American tradition observed in the United States and Canada on February 2. It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from ...
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Louisiana Creole people
Louisiana Creoles (french: Créoles de la Louisiane, lou, Moun Kréyòl la Lwizyàn, es, Criollos de Luisiana) are people descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of bo ...
*
Mime
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email messages to support text in character sets other than ASCII, as well as attachments of audio, video, images, and application programs. Message ...
*
Native Hawaiians
Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians, Kānaka Maoli, Aboriginal Hawaiians, First Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians) ( haw, kānaka, , , and ), are the indigenous ethnic group of Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands.
Hawaii ...
*
Ouiji board
The ouija ( , ), also known as a spirit board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the Latin alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words "yes", "no", occasionally "hello" and "goodbye", along with various symbols and grap ...
*
Powwow
A powwow (also pow wow or pow-wow) is a gathering with dances held by many Native American and First Nations communities. Powwows today allow Indigenous people to socialize, dance, sing, and honor their cultures. Powwows may be private or pu ...
s
*
Practical jokes
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...
*
Saint John's Eve
Saint John's Eve, starting at sunset on 23 June, is the eve of celebration before the Feast Day of Saint John the Baptist. The Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:26–37, 56–57) states that John was born six months before Jesus; therefore, the feast of J ...
*
Shakers
The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a Millenarianism, millenarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian sect founded in England and then organized in the Unit ...
*
Symbols
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
*
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...
*
Thumbs down
A thumb signal, usually described as a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, is a common hand gesture achieved by a closed fist held with the thumb extended upward or downward in approval or disapproval, respectively. These gestures have become metaphors i ...
*
Trick or Treating
Trick-or-treating is a traditional Halloween custom for children and adults in some countries. During the evening of Halloween, on October 31, people in costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase "trick or treat". The ...
*
Yo-yo
A yo-yo (also spelled yoyo) is a toy consisting of an axle connected to two disks, and a string looped around the axle, similar to a spool. It is an ancient toy with proof of existence since 500 BCE. The yo-yo was also called a bandalore in ...
s
Childlore and games
Childlore
Childlore is the folklore or folk culture of children and young people. It includes, for example, rhymes and games played in the school playground. The best known researchers of the field were Iona and Peter Opie.
Overview
The subject matter of ...
is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in a
street culture Street culture may refer to:
* Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities
* Street market
* Children's street culture
* Street carnival
* Block party
* Street identity
* Street food
* Café culture
* Several youth subculture or countercultu ...
outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as
Iona and Peter Opie
Iona Margaret Balfour Opie, (13 October 1923 – 23 October 2017) and Peter Mason Opie (25 November 1918 – 5 February 1982) were an English married team of folklorists who applied modern techniques to understanding children's literature and ...
demonstrated in their pioneering book ''Children's Games in Street and Playground''.
Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the
culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by the sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it.
Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take the artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means. This is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century.
As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them
Alice Gomme
Alice Bertha Gomme, Lady Gomme (born Merck; 4 January 1853, London – 5 January 1938, London), was a leading British folklorist, and a pioneer in the study of children's games.
Life
Gomme was the daughter of Charles Merck, a master tailor, and ...
in Britain and
William Wells Newell
William Wells Newell (1839–1907) was an American folklorist, school teacher, minister and philosophy professor.
Biography
Newell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. After tryi ...
in the United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by
Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today.
These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve the same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of
balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like
Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series (
Alphabet song
The alphabet song is any of various songs used to teach children an alphabet. Alphabet songs typically recite the names of all letters of the alphabet of a given language in order.
The ABC (Verse 1)
"The ABC Song", otherwise referred to as ...
). They also provide the necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
that undergirds the developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries.
Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games.
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Buck buck
Buck buck (also known as Johnny-on-a-Pony, or Johnny-on-the-Pony) is a children's game with several variants. One version of the game is played when "one player climbs another's back" and the climber guesses "the number of certain objects out of ...
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Counting rhymes
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Dandling rhymes
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Finger and toe rhymes
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Counting-out game
A counting-out game or counting-out rhyme is a simple method of 'randomly' selecting a person from a group, often used by children for the purpose of playing another game. It usually requires no materials, and is achieved with spoken words or hand ...
s
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Dreidel
A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl ( ; yi, דרײדל, dreydl, plural: ''dreydlech''; he, סביבון, sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gamb ...
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Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe"—which can be spelled a number of ways—is a children's counting rhyme, counting-out rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag (game), tag, or for selecting various other things. It is one of a large group of s ...
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Games
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such ...
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Traditional games
This is a list of games that used to be played by children, some of which are still being played today. Traditional children's games do not include commercial products such as board games but do include games which require props such as hopscotch ...
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London Bridge Is Falling Down
"London Bridge Is Falling Down" (also known as "My Fair Lady" or "London Bridge") is a traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game, which is found in different versions all over the world. It deals with the dilapidation of London Bridge ...
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Lullabies
A lullaby (), or cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowled ...
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Nursery rhymes
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From t ...
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Playground song
A children's song may be a nursery rhyme set to music, a song that children invent and share among themselves or a modern creation intended for entertainment, use in the home or education. Although children's songs have been recorded and studied ...
s
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Ball-bouncing rhymes
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Rhymes
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
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Riddle
A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requir ...
s
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Ring a Ring o Roses
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Jump-rope rhymes
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Stickball
Stickball is a street game similar to baseball, usually formed as a pick-up game played in large cities in the Northeastern United States, especially New York City and Philadelphia. The equipment consists of a broom handle and a rubber ball, ...
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Street games
A street game or street sport is a sport or game that is played on city streets rather than a prepared field. Street games are usually simply play time activities for children in the most convenient venue. Some street games have risen to the l ...
Folk history
A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as
Richard Dorson
Richard Mercer Dorson (March 12, 1916 – September 11, 1981) was an American folklorist, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. Dorson has been called the "father of American folklore"Nichols, Amber M.Richard M. ...
. This field of study is represented in ''The Folklore Historian'', an annual journal sponsored by the History and Folklore Section of the
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...
and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies.
The study of folk history is particularly well developed in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, where the ''Handbook of Irish Folklore'' (the standard book used by field workers of the
Irish Folklore Commission
The Irish Folklore Commission (''Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann'' in Irish) was set up in 1935 by the Irish Government to study and collect information on the folklore and traditions of Ireland.
History
Séamus Ó Duilearga (James Hamilton Dela ...
) recognizes "historical tradition" as a separate category, traditionally referred to as ''seanchas''.
Henry Glassie Henry Glassie (born 24 March 1941) College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, has done fieldwork on five continents and written books on the full range of folkloristic interest, from drama, song, and story to craft, art, and archi ...
made a pioneering contribution in his classic study, ''Passing the Time in Ballymenone''. Another notable exponent is historian
Guy Beiner
Guy Beiner (born in 1968 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli historian of the late-modern period. He was formerly a full professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel. In September 2021, he was named the Sullivan Chair in Irish ...
who has presented in-depth studies of Irish folk history, identifying a number of characteristic genres for what he has named "history telling", such as stories (divided into tales and "mini-histories"), songs and ballads (especially rebel songs), poems, rhymes, toasts, prophecies, proverbs and sayings, place-names, and a variety of commemorative ritual practices. These are often recited by dedicated storytellers (''seanchaithe'') and folk historians (''staireolaithe''). Beiner has since adopted the term ''vernacular historiography'' in an attempt to move beyond the confines of "the artificial divides between oral and literary cultures that lie at the heart of conceptualizations of oral tradition".
Folklore performance in context
![Slovene Folklore Dancers 7](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Slovene_Folklore_Dancers_7.jpg)
Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in the performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist
Roger D. Abrahams Roger David Abrahams (June 12, 1933 – June 20, 2017) was an American folklorist whose work focused on the expressive cultures and cultural histories of the Americas, with a specific emphasis on African American peoples and traditions.
Abrahams ...
has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects.
This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in the second half of the 20th century, when the two terms "
folklore performance" and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community.
The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with
ethnography
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
and
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist
Victor Turner
Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as ...
identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness,
framing, the use of symbolic language, and employing the
subjunctive mood
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...
. In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into the language of a folklore performance.
Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as a social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond the utility of the object.
Backstory
Before the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The
Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time.
Following the Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the
social sciences
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soci ...
, attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was
Alan Dundes
Alan Dundes (September 8, 1934 – March 30, 2005) was an American folklorist. He spent much of his career as a professional academic at the University of California, Berkeley and published his ideas in a wide range of books and articles.
H ...
with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by
Dan Ben-Amos
Dan Ben-Amos (born September 3, 1934) is a folklorist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he holds the Graduate Program Chair for the Department of Folklore and Folklife.
Education
Ben-Amos was born in Tel Aviv (t ...
at the American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972
Richard Dorson
Richard Mercer Dorson (March 12, 1916 – September 11, 1981) was an American folklorist, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. Dorson has been called the "father of American folklore"Nichols, Amber M.Richard M. ...
called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined the job of folklorists..."
[A more extensive discussion of this can be found in "The 'Text/Context' Controversy and the Emergence of Behavioral Approaches in Folklore", ]
Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs.
Tradition-bearer and audience
Transmission is a communicative process requiring a binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in the community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality.
The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content.
There is active communication between the audience and the performer. The performer is presenting to the audience; the audience in turn, through its actions and reactions, is actively communicating with the performer. The purpose of this performance is not to create something new but to re-create something that already exists; the performance is words and actions which are known, recognized and valued by both the performer and the audience. For folklore is first and foremost remembered behavior. As members of the same cultural
reference group
In the social sciences, social groups can be categorized based on the various group dynamics that define social organization.Boundless team.Types of Social Groups" ''Social Groups and Organization'' Open_educational_resources">OER_course.html" ...
, they identify and value this performance as a piece of shared cultural knowledge.
Framing the performance
To initiate the performance, there must be a
frame
A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent.
Frame and FRAME may also refer to:
Physical objects
In building construction
*Framing (con ...
of some sort to indicate that what is to follow is indeed performance. The frame brackets it as outside of normal discourse. In customary lore such as life cycle celebrations (ex. birthday) or dance performances, the framing occurs as part of the event, frequently marked by location. The audience goes to the event location to participate. Games are defined primarily by rules, it is with the initiation of the rules that the game is framed. The folklorist
Barre Toelken
John Barre Toelken (June 15, 1935 – November 9, 2018) was an award-winning American folklorist, noted for his study of Native American material and oral traditions.
Early life and education
Barre Toelken was born in Enfield, Massachusetts, to ...
describes an evening spent in a Navaho family playing
string figure
A string figure is a design formed by manipulating string on, around, and using one's fingers or sometimes between the fingers of multiple people. String figures may also involve the use of the mouth, wrist, and feet. They may consist of sing ...
games, with each of the members shifting from performer to audience as they create and display different figures to each other.
In verbal lore, the performer will start and end with recognized linguistic formulas. An easy example is seen in the common introduction to a joke: "Have you heard the one...", "Joke of the day...", or "An elephant walks into a bar". Each of these signals to the listeners that the following is a
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...
, not to be taken literally. The joke is completed with the
punch line
A punch line (a. k. a. punch-line or punchline) concludes a joke; it is intended to make people laugh. It is the third and final part of the typical joke structure. It follows the introductory framing of the joke and the narrative which sets up ...
of the joke. Another traditional narrative marker in English is the framing of a fairy tale between the phrases "
Once upon a time
"Once upon a time" is a stock phrase used to introduce a narrative of past events, typically in fairy tales and folk tales. It has been used in some form since at least 1380 (according to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'') in storytelling in the ...
" and "They all lived happily ever after." Many languages have
similar phrases which are used to frame a traditional tale. Each of these linguistic formulas removes the bracketed text from ordinary discourse, and marks it as a recognized form of stylized, formulaic communication for both the performer and the audience.
In the subjunctive voice
Framing as a narrative device serves to signal to both the story teller and the audience that the narrative which follows is indeed a fiction (verbal lore), and not to be understood as historical fact or reality. It moves the framed narration into the
subjunctive mood
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...
, and marks a space in which "fiction, history, story, tradition, art, teaching, all exist within the narrated or performed expressive 'event' outside the normal realms and constraints of reality or time." This shift from the
realis
A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
to the
irrealis mood
In linguistics, irrealis moods (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contras ...
is understood by all participants within the reference group. It enables these fictional events to contain meaning for the group, and can lead to very real consequences.
Anderson's law of auto-correction
The theory of self-correction in folklore transmission was first articulated by the folklorist
Walter Anderson in the 1920s; this posits a feedback mechanism which would keep folklore variants closer to the original form.
[Anderson is best known for his monograph '' Kaiser und Abt'' (Folklore Fellows' Communications 42, Helsinki 1923) on folktales of type AT 922.]
This theory addresses the question about how, with multiple performers and multiple audiences, the artifact maintains its identity across time and geography. Anderson credited the audience with censoring narrators who deviated too far from the known (traditional) text.
Any performance is a two-way communication process. The performer addresses the audience with words and actions; the audience in turn actively responds to the performer. If this performance deviates too far from audience expectations of the familiar folk artifact, they will respond with negative feedback. Wanting to avoid more negative reaction, the performer will adjust his performance to conform to audience expectations. "Social reward by an audience
sa major factor in motivating narrators..."
It is this dynamic feedback loop between performer and audience which gives stability to the text of the performance.
In reality, this model is not so simplistic; there are multiple redundancies in the active folklore process. The performer has heard the tale multiple times, he has heard it from different story tellers in multiple versions. In turn, he tells the tale multiple times to the same or a different audience, and they expect to hear the version they know. This expanded model of redundancy in a non-linear narrative process makes it difficult to innovate during any single performance; corrective feedback from the audience will be immediate. "At the heart of both autopoetic self-maintenance and the 'virality' of meme transmission... it is enough to assume that some sort of recursive action maintains a degree of integrity
f the artifact
F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.
Hist ...
in certain features ... sufficient to allow us to recognize it as an instance of its type."
Context of material lore
For material folk artifacts, it becomes more fruitful to return to the terminology of Alan Dundes: text and context. Here the text designates the physical artifact itself, the single item made by an individual for a specific purpose. The context is then unmasked by observation and questions concerning both its production and its usage. Why was it made, how was it made, who will use it, how will they use it, where did the raw materials come from, who designed it, etc. These questions are limited only by the skill of the interviewer.
In his study of southeastern Kentucky chair makers, Michael Owen Jones describes production of a chair within the context of the life of the craftsman. For
Henry Glassie Henry Glassie (born 24 March 1941) College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, has done fieldwork on five continents and written books on the full range of folkloristic interest, from drama, song, and story to craft, art, and archi ...
in his study of Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, the investigation concerns the historical pattern he finds repeated in the dwellings of this region: the house is planted in the landscape just as the landscape completes itself with the house. The artisan in his roadside stand or shop in the nearby town wants to make and display products which appeal to customers. There is "a craftsperson's eagerness to produce 'satisfactory items' due to a close personal contact with the customer and expectations to serve the customer again." Here the role of consumer "... is the basic force responsible for the continuity and discontinuity of behavior."
In material culture the context becomes the cultural environment in which the object is made (chair), used (house), and sold (wares). None of these artisans is "anonymous" folk; they are individuals making a living with the tools and skills learned within and valued in the context of their community.
Toelken's conservative-dynamic continuum
No two performances are identical. The performer attempts to keep the performance within expectations, but this happens despite a multitude of changing variables. He has given this performance one time more or less, the audience is different, the social and political environment has changed. In the context of material culture, no two hand-crafted items are identical. Sometimes these deviations in the performance and the production are unintentional, just part of the process. But sometimes these deviations are intentional; the performer or artisan want to play with the boundaries of expectation and add their own creative touch. They perform within the tension of conserving the recognized form and adding innovation.
The folklorist Barre Toelken identifies this tension as "a combination of both changing ('dynamic') and static ('conservative') elements that evolve and change through sharing, communication and performance." Over time, the cultural context shifts and morphs: new leaders, new technologies, new values, new awareness. As the context changes, so must the artifact, for without modifications to map existing artifacts into the evolving cultural landscape, they lose their meaning.
Joking
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...
as an active form of verbal lore makes this tension visible as
joke cycles
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...
come and go to reflect new issues of concern. Once an artifact is no longer applicable to the context, transmission becomes a nonstarter; it loses relevancy for a contemporary audience. If it is not transmitted, then it is no longer folklore and becomes instead an historic relic.
In the electronic age
Folklorists have begun to identify how the advent of electronic communications will modify and change the performance and transmission of folklore artifacts. It is clear that the internet is modifying folkloric process, not killing it, as despite the historic association between folklore and anti-modernity, people continue to use traditional expressive forms in new media, including the internet. Jokes and joking are as plentiful as ever both in traditional face-to-face interactions and through electronic transmission. New communication modes are also transforming traditional stories into many different configurations. The fairy tale
Snow White
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as Ta ...
is now offered in
multiple media forms for both children and adults, including a television show and video game.
See also
Notes
Footnotes
References
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* "Legend" definition in folktale , ''Dictionary.com''
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Further reading
Folklore - Electronic Journal of Folklore
External links
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{{Authority control
1840s neologisms