Introduction to Folk Genres

Although many readers are familiar with literary fairy tales told or read in their childhood that are typically retellings, redactions, or inventions by nineteenth century authors like Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and Madame d’Aulnoy, most readers are not so familiar with distinctions between literary fairy tales and folk fairy tales, nor are readers typically aware that there are many more categories of folk narratives beyond what’s been promoted in bookstores and the film industry. There’s a wide variety of folk tales and fascinating intersections between the folk and literary narratives. This chapter serves as an introduction to some of those genres and developments that have helped to influence the rise of fantasy, horror, and science fiction literature.

Folk narratives seem to be defined implicitly by their assumed original medium: they are oral narratives, not written documents. However, as folklorists and literary critics have long recognized, there is a long history of cross-fertilization from static written texts to wandering bards; the dichotomy does not really hold. Whether one is making a case for the orality of an urban legend—think how the film Candyman (2021), for example, or the Creepy Pasta generated Slenderman^[1] has become part of the storytelling tradition of adolescents—or a dormitory campfire tale of a local ghost—has that ghost walked the halls of other universities?—variable origins and manifestations of tale-types and motifs tend to defy strict definitions.

Folklore by its very nature is constantly changing—adapting new materials and finding new mediums for communal sharing.

English antiquarian William John Thoms first used the term “Folk-Lore” in correspondence in 1846, followed by a column, and his usage reveals the assumptions the term generally dealt with popular legends and beliefs and tales of poorer members of society:

Your pages have so often given evidence of the interest which you take in what we in England designate as Popular Antiquities, or Popular Literature (though by-the-bye it is more a Lore than a Literature, and would be most aptly described by a good Saxon compound, Folk-Lore, –the Lore of the People) –that I am not without hopes of enlisting your aid in garnering the few ears which are remaining, scattered over that field from which our forefathers might have gathered a goodly crop. ^[2]

This attitude voiced by Thoms has become partly an antiquated notion–that folklore is to be gathered like a rare “crop” from the poor; today folklore is recognized as part of any culture or group of people that participates in practices engaging traditions.

Like Thoms, the Grimms, as Grimms specialist Jack Zipes explains, were very much focused on preservation of the “crop” of rural lore, and for them this was a significant nationalist enterprise to capture the German zeitgeist: “Broadly speaking, the Grimms sought to collect and preserve all kinds of ancient relics as if they were sacred and precious gems that consisted of tales, myths, songs, fables, legends, epics, documents, and other artifacts—not just fairy tales.”^[3]

Most current folklorists recognize the Internet as the dominant sphere of rapidly shared communications of new lore; workplace or recreational settings are not required anymore than orality. Folk narratives can originate anywhere, and as long as there is communication that involves traditional continuity, then the orality itself is not necessary. Dan Ben Amos defined folklore as “artistic communication in small groups,” which has proved influential to those studying performance studies, but for a more compelling definition of folklore that accounts for its staying power, the role of tradition must be considered—folklore is more than any single performance because it carries an influence to others who have the opportunity to pass the content onwards. This is true whether we’re talking about visual folk arts like painting or basket weaving or folk singing, and certainly folk narratives. As Dr. Lynn McNeil asserts, at its heart, “folklore is the culture of everyday people” rather than the refined amusements of any particular group or class.^[4]

And now to some basic definitions of folk narratives.

Folk narratives were once considered oral narratives by definition in origin but in practice not only became embedded in other mediums, such as books, films, and memes, but may now originate from digital sources rather than oral contexts.

Folk fairy tales concern wonders understood by teller and adult communities as fictional content. They are typically not sacred to the storytelling community but as a recognized fabrication that explores a variety of subjects, from encounters with magical beings to heroic individuation and explorations of family tensions and communal frustrations that wishful daydreaming can articulate in an aesthetic form. Here the prince or princess or swineherd or miller’s daughter has a chance at a happy resolution after gaining the assistance of magical help against the antagonism of an ogre or witch–whether an unfriendly landlord, parent, step-parent, or other figure of authority. However, where adults see fictional content, children in the audience may approach the stories with very different assumptions about the nature of reality.

Literary critics and folklorists have explored many of the psychological dimensions of folk fairy tales, particularly the ways that some characters appear to be doubles for other characters, the symbolic representations of magical powers and other hyperboles, and the various ways that conflict and resolution helps to channel a range of sexual and fearful impulses of burgeoning adolescent identity. It should be noted that “fairy tales” do not necessarily concern fairies at all, so the appellation is not a designation of content, and “wonder tales” may help foster a clearer understanding of likely content. It is a consciously fictional genre for oral storytelling. No one telling ATU 501 A believes that Cinderella is part of their actual community or ever was. (See below for more on the ATU Tale-Type Index)

Folk legends are oral narratives usually focusing on one primary event and containing folk beliefs that involve some traditional attitude towards the past and often the role of the supernatural within the storytelling community. Often these legends involve one or more characters navigating with some peril that which is preternatural–an extrapolated or intensified enhancement of the natural as a threat, such as the Scottish kelpy, which is a violent spirit often haunting rivers, which are of course dangerous to ford to begin with. To put it simply: folk legends are often spontaneously shared in a community where there is the potential for belief in the narratives as historical accounts while wonder tales are recognized as a contrived fictional genre told for entertainment.

In keeping with their social function of prescribing survival-oriented behavior, folk legends are more likely to not have a happy ending–for instance, encounters with the Devil are not often successful contests of wits but dangerous examples of transgressive behavior. Folk fairy tales–wonder tales–on the other hand, more often depict the Devil as a bit of a numbskull ogre who can be bested, sometimes with a bit of assistance from a diabolic relative (the Devil’s mother for instance) or a wise woman or spiritual intermediary, such as a priest or other practitioner of white magic.

^[5]

Students of folklore will likely eventually encounter the term Sage, which for example Richard Dorson uses in his introduction to his excellent anthology Folktales Told Around the World (1975). The term is used to refer to a folk legend and should not be confused with Icelandic or Norwegian “sagas” which are generally historical family feuds, sometimes with epic scope. There are so many sagas, by the way. Iceland even has a database!^[6]

What else does Iceland have? Wonderful troll street theater:

^[7]

Navigating past the threats articulated in folk legends typically involve knowledge of folk beliefs specific traditions of wisdom that are apotropaic–meant to avert bad luck or other negative supernatural influences. Encounters with the fairies, for example, often present dangerous consequences if the Good People are not handled with respect but caution. Alternately, in folk fairy tales the fairies often play the role of a Helper rather than peril to be averted. Folk beliefs about the fairies include such matters like that they are averse to iron, that they may steal women and children especially (leaving behind old male trooping fairies or a wooden stock in their place), that their changelings are sometimes lactovampires^[8], that they are are active “between the lights” (twilight), that you should not toss water or other materials out your door when they may be passing by, that you should not address them as “fairies” but an alternate term that is a euphemism considered less likely to arouse their ire.

John Gregorson Campbell (not to be confused with the other Scottish folklorist Campbell, John Francis) explains the role of euphemism with the fairies: “Daoine còire, “honest folk,” had its origin in a desire to give no unnecessary offence. The “folk” might be listening, and were pleased when people spoke well of them, and angry when spoken of slightingly. [. . .] The same feeling made the Irish Celt call them daoine matha “good people,” and the Lowland Scot ‘gude neighbours.”^[9]

It is important to recognize that a folk legend is typically not an endorsement by the storyteller of wholesale belief in the events narrated. Most community members in the past–and likely none today–who heard an Irish changeling story would not apply painful and lethal measures to expel a potential changeling, though in 1895 a young woman Bridget Cleary was murdered and her death was rationalized as defense against a fairy changeling. Prosecution followed.^[10]

However, there is at least the potential to hold some degree of belief–but that also may involve skepticism on the continuum of belief. A storyteller may share what someone else said about the particular legend, and the implication is that someone at some time believed the account or may believe the account–this is in contrast to the folk fairy tale where all adult community members will recognize the genre as fiction.

A folk legend is not necessarily fiction at all, though determination of the truth value of a narrative is not the responsibility of the literary critic or folklorist. To complicate things further, the distinction between folk fairy tale and folk legend may not always be as clear in practice as it is in theory. For instance, just as the geographic distribution of tale-types has been studied for folk fairy tales, so has the distribution of migratory legends.^[11]

As Timothy Tangherlini also explains, folk legends–like folk fairy tales–are subject to change over geographic territory, and just the presence of a local legend does not mean that all content in that legend is unique to the region. There are migratory legends. Tangherlini makes a rhetorical comparison with the ecological concept of adaptive and divergent evolutionary variation based on development and distribution. Tangherlini’s definition remains the folkloric gold standard for precision of folk legends: “a traditional, (mono) episodic, highly ecotypified, localized and historicized narrative of past events told as believable in a conversational mode.”^[12]