The Evolution of Folklore

The Evolution of Folklore

The intention of this book was not to do a study of the many classifications of the faery lore through out history.

Many scholars and artists have done that already, though I need it to do some sort of classification of the most popular nature spirits in order to point out their functions in guarding the endangered elements, (air, fire, water, earth).

This is not just another art book of faeries. My most important intention for this book has been to illustrate the archetype of “activists” and the folklore that they are creating in this evolution of folklore. Folklore, to the anthropologist. Is one of the important parts that go to make up the culture of any given people. It is important, if only because it is one of the universals; that is, there is no known culture which does not include folklore. No group of people, however remote or however simple their technology, has ever been discovered which does not employ some form of folklore. Because of this,and because the same tales and proverbs may be known to both, folklore is a bridge between literate and non literate societies. Although some anthropologists,for one reason or another devote little attention to folklore, it is obvious that any ethnographic study which does not consider folklore can be only a partial and incomplete description of the culture as a whole. Moreover, since folklore serves to sanction and validate religious, social, political, and economic institutions and to play an important role as an educative device in their transmission from one generation to another, there can be no thorough analysis of any of these other parts of culture which does not give serious consideration to folklore.

The serious study of folktale goes back little more than a century. When the Grimm brothers began to speculate about the nature of their famous collection around 1820, it appeared clear that the historical and the comparitive study of tales handed down by word of mouth would call for methods and techniques quite different from those customarily employed in the investigation of literary texts. With manuscripts or printed documents the scholar is attempting to establish a direct chain of association binding one of these inmediately to another revision a of a manuscript was written. Let us say, Italy in the fifth century by a known author. Version B was a reworking of A by A French monk in Paris in the eleventh century.

We see the monk at work on the old manuscript and our investigation is concerned with establishing the fact of his access to the manuscript and with seeing what changes he made in it. But the fact that a is from Italy and B from France and that six centuries separate them is of minor importance once written and safely preserved the manuscript could be used at any time and place and no one need to concern himself with the historical events of the centuries while it lay in the library or of the rivers and mountains and political boundaries it crossed when it was eventually carried to paris and to the monk’s cell. With the oral tale, however, all these things become important. We find ourselves confronted with five hundred versions or a well-knit story coming from all parts of the world. At first view these hundreds of variants may seem to be filled with chances divergences-a mere kaleidoscopic shifting motifs and episodes. But as we look at them more closely we become aware that men and women have been telling the tale through the centuries and in many lands and that the life of the tale is a part of their lives and can be understood only when we know these tellers and hearers.

We are not surprised therefore that the seeming lawlesness is only apparent and comes only because so many men in so many places have left their marks on the tale the study of such a story. The attempt to find order in the seeming confusion, involves the use of elaborate analysis which will show that all these variations are obeying laws or combinations of laws, however complicated or baffling. If one is to determined the direction the tradition has traveled he must try to reconstruct a theoretical original and at least attempt to trace the historical and geographical conditions under which the tradition has been kept alive in the memories and in the interests of the intervening generations.

Because folklorists depend greatly upon the criterion of oral transmission in defining folklore,there have been a number of studies devoted to describing and analizing this process. Those who depend upon print, often to the extent of relying uppon their memeries, frequently assume that the existence of an item of folklore must be a most precarious one oral transmission is considered to be unreliable in contrast to the reliability of transmission by print. It is felt that folklore, to be preserved must be orally communicated intact from a bearer of tradition to a new bearer,and that is extremely unlikely to occur consistely over long periods of time. If, for example a superb raconteur of folklore dies without passing on his materials. It is feared that this materials may die with him or perhaps the person to whom he entrusts the task of perpetuating the tradition prooves faithless to the trust.

The infinite possibilities of the demise of a tradition because of a weak link in the human chain of transmission makes those unfamiliar with folklore suspicious and sceptical of the strength of the oral tradition. It is imagined that only if the materials are written down or put in print can they be saved for posterity.

Yet the amazing thing is that folklore,in the vast majority of cases, is saved for posterity without the aid of writing or print. One must remembered that in most of the cultures of the world, all the information culturally defined as important is passed on orally. Folklore is destined to be forever in transit scholars of the nineteen century tried to solve two leading questions; (1)where do folktales come from? (2)what do folktales mean?.

The term ”folk”can refer to any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor, it does not matter what the linking factor is, it could be a common occupation, language or religion, but what is important is that a group formed for whatever reasons will have some traditions which it calls its own.

Now this proves something very interesting. Most people think of folklore as tales of myth, legends, riddles, facts and fantasies only and they will not consider labeling an enviromental network as folklore.1000 years from now the political action of Julia Butterfly living in an old growth tree for two years in order to try to save it, might be told as a faerytale, of some folklore at the turn of a millenium...