The terms myth, folklore, legend, and fairy tale are often used interchangeably, leading to the misconception that they mean the same thing: fanciful tales. Although it's true that these terms may refer to bodies of writing that answer some of life's basic questions or present commentary on morality, each type presents a distinct reader experience.
The oral fictional tale, from whatever ultimate origin, is practically universal both in time and place. Certain peoples tell very simple stories and others tales of great complexity, but the basic pattern of tale-teller and audience is found everywhere and as far back as can be learned. Differing from or tradition, which is usually believed, the oral fictional tale gives the storyteller absolute freedom as to credibility so long as he stays within the limits of local taboos and tells tales that please.A folktale travels with great ease from one storyteller to another.
Since a particular story is characterized by its basic pattern and by narrative motifs rather than by its verbal form, it passes language boundaries without difficulty. The spread of a folktale is determined rather by large areas, such as North, Eurasian, Central and Southern African, Oceanic, or South American. And with recent increasing human mobility many tales, especially of Eurasian origin, have disregarded even these culture boundaries and have gone with new settlers to other continents.In many preliterate folktales are hardly to be distinguished from, since, especially in tales of s and heroes, they presuppose a background of belief about tribal origins and the relation of men and gods. Conscious fictions, however, enter even into such stories. Animals abound here whether in their natural form or anthropomorphized so that they seem sometimes men and sometimes beasts.
Adventure stories, exaggerations, marvels of all kinds such as other world journeys, and narratives of marriage or sexual adventure, usually between human beings and animals, are common. Much rarer, contrary to the views of earlier students, are explanatory stories. Tales of this description are especially characteristic of Africa, Oceania, and the South American Indians.
In much of the world, especially Europe and Asia, the folktale deals with a greater variety of incidents than just described. In the course of time folktale scholars have given most attention to this area and have classified these stories so that the vast collections of them in manuscripts or books can be referred to with exactness.All readers of such collections as those of Grimm will easily recall examples of tales of speaking animals. These may be old, Aesop’s fables or parts of the Reynard, but most of them are based on some ancient.
Such animal stories are especially numerous in eastern Europe. But better-known perhaps are the ordinary folktales that deal with humans and their adventures. For these, usually laid in a highly imaginative time and place—a never-never land—and filled with unrealistic and often supernatural creatures, there exists no good English word, so that usually scholars use the German term. Here belong “The Dragon Slayer,” “The Danced-Out Shoes,” the “Swan-Maiden” tales, “Cupid and Psyche,” “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” “Faithful John,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and the like. Here also belong certain stories with religious or motivation and tales of robbers and thieves—“Peter at the Gate of Heaven,” “The Clever Peasant Daughter,” “Rhampsinitus.” A major division of this classification of tales deals with jests.
Examples are the many stories of numskulls, of clever rascals, and tall tales filled with exaggerations or lies. Finally come formula tales like “The House that Jack Built.”. Mermaids and merman, illustration by Hans Tegner, from the 1900 edition of Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen. Courtesy of the Folklore Society Library, University College, London; photograph, R.B. FlemingThe relation between the animal and the human is very close in all folk literature. In the preliterate cultures of the American Indians, the Pacific Islanders, or the Central Africans, the culture heroes who are responsible for the good and the bad in the life of the tribe may upon one occasion appear as animals and upon another as men.
Such was true of the ancient gods of Egypt or Greece. The question whether of the American Indian tribes is animal or human apparently makes no difference to those who tell stories about him.Aside from these semidivine creatures, now animal or bird or man as they wish, supernatural and ill-defined creatures, much more difficult to visualize, are also common.
Or their counterparts appear in the legends of a good part of the world. It is hard to define them, for in one place they will appear in full human size, in another as little creatures inhabiting mounds or caves or living under the roots of trees. In some countries they are creatures, helpful to men and women. They reward human services but punish misdeeds. They marry or consort with human beings.
In some traditions they are malevolent creatures, and meetings with them always bring disaster or bad luck. Almost every country has produced its own variety of helpful and harmful creatures. Stories of the activity of witches and devils, or water spirits and the supernatural guardians of mountains or trees vary in details from land to land, but many of the incidents related about them are easily transferred from one to another.
Stories of visits to quite other supernatural realms, fairyland, for example, may be told in all their details in Russia or Greece. Are usually considered to be ogres of one kind or another but they may also be considered the most stupid of all beings and may be the subjects of hundreds of numskull anecdotes. Underground creatures like the in “Snow White” are usually helpful and kindly, but other underground creatures bring only disaster.The widespread belief in the return of the dead has resulted in many stories of encounters with or of actual resurrection. These stories differ greatly in various parts of the world and are much influenced by the current religious ideas. It is likely that in the whole world of traditional literature the belief in ghosts has survived longest.Traditions of historic characters have a tendency to repeat themselves from land to land and, although they are told as facts, may form as definite patterns as any fictional folktale. Such stories as Joseph and Potiphar’s wife or the exposure and ultimate return of the hero appear in many places.
The expected return of from Avalon or of Barbarossa from his cavern are only two examples of a widespread motif of this kind.It is difficult and perhaps impossible to distinguish the explanatory legend from the. Tales explaining the origins of customs or of the shape or nature of various animals and plants, of such distant objects as the stars, or even of the world itself often ascribe such origins to the action of some ancient animal or to some magic transformation. These are often connected with stories of the gods or demigods and may even be a part of the religious beliefs of those who tell them.Generally, legends and traditions of this kind are simple in their form and contain only a single motif or at most two or three. The problem of proper classification for the purpose of studying these has proved very difficult, for while the materials of these legends and traditions show many interesting parallels and resemblances, they vary greatly from place to place. The relation of these stories to actual history, to mythology, and to the fictional folktale is of much interest to students of folk literature.
Folk literature, also called folklore or oral tradition, the lore (traditional knowledge and beliefs) of having no written language. It is transmitted by and consists, as does written, of both prose and verse narratives, poems and songs, dramas, rituals, proverbs, riddles, and the like. Nearly all known peoples, now or in the past, have produced it.Until about 4000 bce all literature was oral, but, beginning in the years between 4000 and 3000 bce, writing developed both in Egypt and in the Mesopotamian civilization at Sumer. From that time on there are records not only of practical matters such as law and business but increasingly of written literature. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription.The nature of oral traditionsNor can any evolution in folk literature or any overall developments be spoken of explicitly. Each group of people, no matter how small or large, has handled its folk literature in its own way.
Depending as it does upon the transmission from person to person and being subject to the skill or the lack of skill of those who pass it on and to the many influences, physical or social, that consciously or unconsciously affect a tradition, what may be observed is a history of continual change. An item of folk literature sometimes shows relative stability and sometimes undergoes drastic transformations. If these changes are looked at from a modern Western point of view, judgments can be made as to whether they are on the whole favourable or unfavourable. But it must be remembered that the folk listening to or participating in its oral literature have completely different standards from those of their interpreters.
Nevertheless, two directions in this continually changing human movement may be observed. Occasionally a talented or tale-teller, or perhaps a group of them, may develop techniques that result in an improvement over the course of time from any point of view and in the actual development of a new literary form. On the other hand, many items of folk literature, because of historic movements or overwhelming foreign influences or the mere lack of skillful practitioners of the tradition, become less and less important, and occasionally die out from the oral repertory.
The details of such changes have been of great interest to all students of folk literature.The beginnings of written literature in Sumer and Egypt 5,000 or 6,000 years ago took place in a world that knew only folk literature. During the millennia since then written literature has been surrounded and sometimes all but overwhelmed by the humbler activity of the unlettered. The emergence of the and his carefully preserved manuscript came about slowly and uncertainly, and only in a few places initially—the literary authorship that flourished in the Athens of Pericles or the Jerusalem of the represented only a very small part of the world of their time. Nearly everywhere else the oral storyteller or singer was dominant, and all of what is called literary expression was carried in the memory of the folk, and especially of gifted narrators.All societies have produced some men and women of great natural endowments—shamans, priests, rulers, and warriors—and from these has come the greatest stimulus everywhere toward producing and listening to, tales, and songs. To these the common man has listened to such effect that sometimes he himself has become a bard.
And kings and councillors, still without benefit of writing, have sat enthralled as he entertained them at their banquets.