What is Folklore and Why Is It Important?

by Icy Sedgwick Folklore has enjoyed a boom of interest in recent years, driven in part thanks to the success of the #FolkloreThursday Twitter hashtag, and the subsequent publishing interest in books about the subject. Sitting between fairy tales and myth, folklore often contains the tales of ordinary people who stumbled across something extraordinary. These are the men lured into the Caribbean forest by La Diablesse. Or it may be the Loup-Garou, a person turned into a werewolf for not attending church.  Lore also contains the traditional songs, practices, rituals, and beliefs that those same ordinary people held dear. Some sayings may seem quaint or outdated now, such as “red sky at night, shepherd’s delight”, especially in an era of Google and 24-hour news bulletins. Traditions can seem bizarre, like washing your face in dew collected on May Day to ensure youth and beauty...but is that really as weird as the brief trend for snail slime skincare? But folklore can also tell us what people found important enough to pass on to others - and what 19th-century collectors considered important enough to collect (though they sometimes embellished it, so we sometimes have to take it with a pinch of protective salt).  This is the strength of folklore. It encodes information in storytelling format so that we’re encouraged to pass it on to others, but also to help us remember what we’ve heard. Think about urban legends. Which has more power—being told to be wary of strangers, or hearing about a friend of a friend who met a gorgeous blonde in an anonymous hotel bar, only to wake up in a bathtub of ice, with their kidney missing? Urban legends are a contemporary form of folklore, the old cautionary tales updated to include the threats of everyday life, and given credibility by the ‘friend of a friend’ framing device. In this way, folklore helps us to track the changing preoccupations of people. It’s important to remember there is never one true version of a folktale. Different places have their own variations of a theme, and folklore isn't about “getting the right one”—it’s about understanding why each version was the right one for their time and place. This becomes especially important when we look at folklore on a global level. Folktales often differ around the world because they’re the product of their context. Okiku, the ghost of Himeji Castle in Japan, is embedded in a culture of honour, and she would rather die than succumb to the pressures of a samurai trying to seduce her. The coming of the Cailleach of Scotland and Ireland explains the abrupt arrival—and departure—of winter in northern climes. The Amazon’s Boto Encantado combines the playful spirit of the river dolphin with a darker undercurrent of colonisation and community secrets. Exploring and understanding folklore becomes a way to better understand the cultures that produced it—even for contemporary urban legends. This is especially true when we look at different versions of folk tales that preserve the preoccupations of different regions or periods.  Yet despite these differences, we also find similarities. Forest protectors use their wiles or brute strength to punish those who take too much from the natural world—both in South America and Europe. Men steal the skins of shapeshifting creatures to force them into an often loveless marriage—yet the creatures are branded bad mothers when they regain their skins and their freedom. Death is given a face and a personality as they perform the most essential yet heart-breaking role in the universe. Lawless tricksters like Anansi leverage wit and cunning to topple far more powerful opponents. Reading about folklore, and thinking about these similarities and differences, isn’t just entertaining. It’s also a way to remind ourselves of what others have faced. The movement of Anansi from West Africa to the Caribbean and the United States forces us to confront the realities of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a confrontation necessary to dismantle its legacy for our communities today. The Cihuateteo of the Aztec culture were the spirits of those who died in childbirth, and the culture considered those who died giving birth as fallen heroes. Their recognition of the perils of childbirth is a prompt to address the dangers still faced by people around the world during pregnancy and delivery. Stories of the selkies of northern Europe and the bird women of Oceania remind us that forced marriage still exists, and can inspire us to take action against it. Put simply, folklore is all of this and more. Cautionary tales, dire warnings, encoded information, quaint customs, mighty legends, stories that explain natural processes, and comforting figures for our darkest hour. And despite all this, there’s always the nagging suspicion that some of these creatures might actually be, or have been, real...

About the author:

Icy Sedgwick is the host of the Fabulous Folklore podcast, investigating the strange and often bizarre world of European folklore (with a focus on the British Isles). She's particularly fascinated by the appearance of folklore in popular culture, but also the ways in which folklore preserves information in an easily transmissible format. In case she tires of all that folklore research, former ghost hunter Icy also writes Gothic horror fiction while studying for a PhD, looking at the representation of haunted houses in contemporary Hollywood cinema. Like any good folklorist, she has a horseshoe over her door, and she doesn't stray too close to bodies of water... Icy's book Rebel Folklore: Empowering Tales of Spirits, Witches and Other Misfits from Anansi to Baba Yaga (£19.99, DK) is the perfect book for those looking to expand their interests from astrology, tarot and witchcraft into the world of folklore legend, with tales from all six continents.