what is the purpose of folktales essay

An illustration from Russian Wonder Tales (1912) by Poet Wheeler; illustrated by Ivan Bilibin. Photo by Getty

Folklore is philosophy

Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world.

by Abigail Tulenko   + BIO

The Hungarian folktale Pretty Maid Ibronka terrified and tantalised me as a child. In the story, the young Ibronka must tie herself to the devil with string in order to discover important truths. These days, as a PhD student in philosophy, I sometimes worry I’ve done the same. I still believe in philosophy’s capacity to seek truth, but I’m conscious that I’ve tethered myself to an academic heritage plagued by formidable demons.

The demons of academic philosophy come in familiar guises: exclusivity, hegemony and investment in the myth of individual genius. As the ethicist Jill Hernandez notes , philosophy has been slower to change than many of its sister disciplines in the humanities: ‘It may be a surprise to many … given that theology and, certainly, religious studies tend to be inclusive, but philosophy is mostly resistant toward including diverse voices.’ Simultaneously, philosophy has grown increasingly specialised due to the pressures of professionalisation. Academics zero in on narrower and narrower topics in order to establish unique niches and, in the process, what was once a discipline that sought answers to humanity’s most fundamental questions becomes a jargon-riddled puzzle for a narrow group of insiders.

In recent years, ‘canon-expansion’ has been a hot-button topic, as philosophers increasingly find the exclusivity of the field antithetical to its universal aspirations. As Jay Garfield remarks, it is as irrational ‘to ignore everything not written in the Eurosphere’ as it would be to ‘only read philosophy published on Tuesdays.’ And yet, academic philosophy largely has done just that. It is only in the past few decades that the mainstream has begun to engage seriously with the work of women and non-Western thinkers. Often, this endeavour involves looking beyond the confines of what, historically, has been called ‘philosophy’.

Expanding the canon generally isn’t so simple as resurfacing a ‘standard’ philosophical treatise in the style of white male contemporaries that happens to have been written by someone outside this demographic. Sometimes this does happen, as in the case of Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) whose work has attracted increased recognition in recent years. But Cavendish was the Duchess of Newcastle, a royalist whose political theory criticises social mobility as a threat to social order. She had access to instruction that was highly unusual for women outside her background, which lends her work a ‘standard’ style and structure. To find voices beyond this elite, we often have to look beyond this style and structure.

Texts formerly classified as squarely theological have been among the first to attract significant renewed interest. Female Catholic writers such as Teresa of Ávila or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, whose work had been largely ignored outside theological circles, are now being re- examined through a philosophical lens. Likewise, philosophy departments are gradually including more work by Buddhist philosophers such as Dignāga and Ratnakīrti, whose epistemological contributions have been of especial recent interest . Such thinkers may now sit on syllabi alongside Augustine or Aquinas who, despite their theological bent, have long been considered ‘worthy’ of philosophical engagement.

On the topic of ‘worthiness’, I am wary of using the term ‘philosophy’ as an honorific. It is crucial that our interest in expanding the canon does not involve the implication that the ‘philosophical’ confers a degree of rigour over the theological, literary, etc. To do so would be to engage in a myopic and uninteresting debate over academic borders. My motivating question is not what the label of ‘philosophy’ can confer upon these texts, but what these texts can bring to philosophy. If philosophy seeks insight into the nature of such universal topics as reality, morality, art and knowledge, it must seek input from those beyond a narrow few. Engaging with theology is a great start, but these authors still largely represent an elite literate demographic, and raise many of the same concerns regarding a hegemonic, exclusive and individualistic bent.

As Hernandez quips: ‘[W]e know white, Western men have not cornered the market on deeply human, philosophical questions.’ And furthermore, ‘we also know, prudentially, that philosophy as a discipline needs to (and must) undergo significant navel-gazing to survive … in an ever-increasingly difficult time for homogenous, exclusive academic disciplines.’ In light of our aforementioned demons, it appears that philosophy is in urgent need of an exorcism.

I propose that one avenue forward is to travel backward into childhood – to stories like Ibronka’s. Folklore is an overlooked repository of philosophical thinking from voices outside the traditional canon. As such, it provides a model for new approaches that are directly responsive to the problems facing academic philosophy today. If, like Ibronka, we find ourselves tied to the devil, one way to disentangle ourselves may be to spin a tale.

Folklore originated and developed orally. It has long flourished beyond the elite, largely male, literate classes. Anyone with a story to tell and a friend, child or grandchild to listen, can originate a folktale. At the risk of stating the obvious, the ‘folk’ are the heart of folklore. Women, in particular, have historically been folklore’s primary originators and preservers. In From the Beast to the Blonde (1995), the historian Marina Warner writes that ‘the predominant pattern reveals older women of a lower status handing on the material to younger people’.

Folklore has existed in some form in every culture and, in each, it has brought underrepresented groups to the fore. As we look to expand the canon, folklore is a rich source of thought on topics of philosophic interest with the potential to uplift a wide range of voices who have thus far been largely overlooked.

Folktales puzzle and surprise and haunt. They make us ask ‘Why?’ And they invite us to imagine new ways to respond

In his wry poem ‘The Conundrum of the Workshops’ (1890), Rudyard Kipling describes Adam’s first sketch scratched in the dirt of Eden with a stick:

… [It] was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: ‘It’s pretty, but is it Art?’

And so we may ask: folklore may be inclusive, but is it philosophy?

To answer that question, one would need at least a loose definition of philosophy. This is daunting to provide but, if pressed, I’d turn to Aristotle, whose Metaphysics offers a hint: ‘it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin, and at first began, to philosophise.’ In my view, philosophy is a mode of wondrous engagement, a practice that can be exercised in academic papers, in theological texts, in stories, in prayer, in dinner-table conversations, in silent reflection, and in action. It is this sense of wonder that draws us to penetrate beyond face-value appearances and look at reality anew.

Given this lens, it is unsurprising that one solution to philosophy’s crisis might be found in a childhood pastime. In childhood, we literally see the world with new eyes; here, wonder is most keenly felt. We’ve all heard a child ask ‘Why?’ and realised not only that we don’t know the answer, but that we’d forgotten how miraculously puzzling the question was to begin with. Wonder and folktales are likewise linked. Wundermärchen – the original German word for fairytale – literally translates to ‘wonder tale’. Perhaps this is why children love folktales. In most cultures, folktales predate broad social distinctions between adult and children’s entertainment. But as other flashier diversions have largely overtaken the adult sphere, folktales have maintained their spell over children. They speak the child’s language. They puzzle and surprise and haunt. They make us ask ‘Why?’ And they invite us to imagine new ways to respond.

Aristotle’s wonder-based view of philosophy hasn’t been accepted by all. The late Harry Frankfurt rejected this analysis of what makes a question philosophical, countering in The Reasons of Love (2004):

It is hardly appropriate to characterise these things merely as puzzling. They are startling. They are marvels. The response they inspired must have been deeper, and more unsettling, than simply – as Aristotle puts it – a ‘wondering that the matter is so.’ It must have been resonant with feelings of mystery, of the uncanny, of awe.

But wonder, fear and awe are old friends. Like any Catholic schoolchild, I learned that ‘fear of God’ was just another name for ‘wonder and awe’. It seems that folklore and philosophy meet at this intersection, where wonder and fear converge into something both unsettling and marvellous. The folklorist Maria Tatar writes that, in the world of the folktale, ‘anything can happen, and what happens is often so startling … that it often produces a jolt.’ Folklore and philosophy are both in the business of startling us. Philosophy demands that we confront humanity’s deepest anxieties and longings. Whether we disguise them with phis and psis , it is deeply concerned with our shudders and sighs. And folklore, with its forests and phantoms, is perhaps the largest-scale historical inventory of these fears.

The folklorist Reet Hiiemäe goes as far as to argue it is ‘human fear’ that ‘induced the emergence and formation of folkloric phenomena’. Folklore is an imaginative attempt to make sense of the inexplicable. By tuning into what frightens us, we learn who we are. And if we want to find out what frightens us, the Black Forest is the first place we should look.

P hilosophy and folklore both elicit this sense of wondrous fear, startling awe. They also share a dual aim, well articulated by Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment (1976). For him, the purpose of folklore is to help us ‘live not just moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence.’ Here, as in philosophy, there is the search for the truth, which is to meaningfully attend to the structures of reality we so often take for granted, to perceive the world as more than mere scenery.

Second, there is the aim of a life well lived, the desire that our intellectual enquiry serve our lived experience, that we live and breathe our philosophy as well as contemplate it. The most obvious philosophical application of folklore is to ethics. Most of us are familiar with the parting moral lesson found at the end of familiar childhood tales. Warner argues that one of the most valuable aspects of the medium is its centring of marginalised voices in moral debates. She writes that ‘alternative ways of sifting right and wrong require different guides, ones perhaps discredited or neglected.’ If indeed philosophy is in crisis in part because of a narrowly circumscribed demographic of ‘guides’, folklore is a rich place to look for new ones. Bettelheim also suggests that folktales are normatively laden at their most fundamental level:

Tolkien addressing himself to the question of ‘Is it true?’ remarks that ‘It is not one to be rashly or idly answered.’ He adds that of much more real concern to the child is the question: ‘“Was he good? Was he wicked?” That is, [the child] is more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear.’

Before a child can come to grips with reality, he must have some frame of reference to evaluate it. When he asks whether a story is true, he wants to know whether the story contributes something of importance to his understanding, and whether it has something significant to tell him in regard to his greatest concerns.

Combing through folklore, it is easy to find stories that map well on to our contemporary concerns – many even mirror the structure of core ethical thought-experiments. For instance, in the traditional Russian tale Ilya Muromets and the Dragon, the hero must choose between aiding a king in a distant land whose kingdom is plagued by dragons, and returning to serve his home nation, which is in less dire need. In this tale, themes of partiality, community and nationalism arise. Does great need override one’s partiality toward one’s own family, nation, community? Parallels can be seen in many well-known thought-experiments in contemporary ethics. Whether one is jumping off a pier to save a drowning woman, steering a trolley, or ruining their new shoes in a pond to save a child, philosophers have long been concerned with whether and how our obligations to the familiar and the strange diverge. When mutually exclusive, should one save the life of one’s friend or of a stranger?

Another potent example arises in the Haitian folktale Papa God and General Death. There is a wide ethical literature on the nature and value of death: Fred Feldman’s Confrontations with the Reaper (1992) provides a useful introduction to the many facets of the debate. Is death a great evil? Is it a form of injustice? This tale offers an argument in defence of death. Papa God claims that people love him better than Death because he gives them life, while Death only takes it away. To prove this is so, Papa God asks a local man for water. The man, upon hearing that He is God, refuses Him a drink. When questioned, the man explains that he prefers Death over God:

Because Death has no favourites. Rich, poor, young, old – they are all the same to him … Death takes from all the houses. But you, you give all the water to some people and leave me here with 10 miles to go on my donkey for just one drop.

This tale turns our assumptions on their head, vividly arguing against the common presupposition that death is a moral evil. In its universality, death is actually a form of justice in a way that life never can be.

I n many cultures, folklore has even greater ethical import. For instance, the scholars Oluwole Coker and Adesina Coker argue that in Yoruba culture folklore plays a large role in ‘generating the laws governing intra and interpersonal relationships, communal cohesion, ethical regime and the justice system’. They term this relationship ‘folklaw’, explaining that folklore functions as a law-like ethical system that underlies social practices. They also emphasise that folklore is a ‘pathway for existential philosophy among the Yoruba’, as ethical quandaries are primarily explored through story. The Yoruba have long taken folklore seriously as a source of ethical reasoning.

From Gaki-Zoshi (The Hungry Ghosts Scroll). Late 12th century. Courtesy the Kyoto Museum .

Beyond ethics, folklore touches all the branches of philosophy. With regard to its metaphysical import, Buddhist folklore provides a striking example. When dharma – roughly, the ultimate nature of reality – ‘is internalised, it is most naturally taught in the form of folk stories: the jataka tales in classical Buddhism, the koans in Zen,’ writes the Zen teacher Robert Aitken Roshi. The philosophers Jing Huang and Jonardon Ganeri offer a fascinating philosophical analysis of a Buddhist folktale seemingly dating back to the 3rd century BCE, which they’ve translated as ‘Is This Me?’ They argue that the tale constructs a similar metaphysical dilemma to Plutarch’s ‘ship of Theseus’ thought-experiment, prompting us to question the nature of personal identity:

The story tells the tale of a traveller’s unfortunate encounter with a pair of demons, one of whom is bearing a corpse. As the first demon tears off one of the man’s arms, the second demon takes an arm from the corpse and uses it as a transplant. This sport continues until the man’s whole body has been replaced, torn limb from limb, with the body-parts of the corpse. The man is given to ask himself: ‘What has become of me ?’

This tale tests our intuitions about the relationship between an entity’s parts and its whole. At what point does the mass of parts become the man? What sorts of material substitution entail an identity change?

Ancient tales have played a pivotal role in challenging previously unquestioned epistemic assumptions

The conclusion of the tale foregrounds an alternative approach to epistemology. Following the Buddhist Madhyamaka tradition of the ‘tetralemma’, the tale outlines four possible responses to the dilemma: is the replaced body the original man? 1) Yes it is the man. 2) No it is not the man. 3) It is both the man and not the man. 4) It is neither the man nor not the man. The tale progresses to reveal that each of these options leads to some absurdity. This functions as a reductio argument against the notion of personal identity altogether, suggesting that the concept was, from the start, empty or incorrectly defined. Other tales affirm the more radical notion that it is coherent to reject or accept all four responses simultaneously.

This heterodox approach to epistemology inspired the logician Graham Priest’s notion of ‘dialetheism’, which posits the coherence of ‘dialetheias’ – joint propositions that include a statement and its negation. The development of dialetheism provides an example of a case where ancient tales have already played a pivotal role in challenging previously unquestioned epistemic assumptions. What other philosophic insights might lie buried in folklore? What new questions might they ask, and how might they widen our understanding of the scope of answers available?

Then there is the question of methodology: when faced with a folktale, how would a sympathetic philosopher proceed? The tales generally aren’t going to give us arguments neatly pre-packaged in premise-conclusion form. We will need to put in the interpretive work to understand the contextual and stylistic features necessary to extract philosophic insights. There will be interpretive, literary and anthropological facts to consider. Perhaps philosophers are ill-equipped to do this work alone – and all the better! Cross-disciplinary engagement broadens our enquiry and leaves all involved enriched. How wonderful would it be if departments collaborated more often, if we saw papers co-published by folklorists and metaphysicians, if our search for truth transcended bureaucratic academic divisions and led us through the winding paths of stories, paths we shared in childhood, but have long since forgotten.

But before we sharpen our pencils to hunt for proofs, I would invite my fellow philosophers to be open to alternative approaches to engaging with philosophic ideas. Don’t get me wrong, I love premise-conclusion form as much as the next girl (and probably far more, unless the next girl is also a graduate student in metaphysics). But it would be patently irrational to assume that the whole of philosophic understanding is recorded in that form. (And we lovers of proofs famously detest irrationality.)

In folktales, we may not always find arguments, at least as typically construed. This is not a sign of philosophical impotence. The European bias of the canon tends to privilege a particular argumentative structure. However, stories are not new to philosophy: Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard were all vivid storytellers. Today, even the most methodologically rigid analytic philosophy is not immune to the lure of narrative. Just look at Bettelheim’s description of the function of fairy tales, which could be mistaken for a description of the contemporary thought-experiment:

It is characteristic of fairy tales to state an existential dilemma briefly and pointedly … [in order] to come to grips with the problem in its most essential form …

Storytelling is germane to the philosophic tradition, despite a general decline in recent times. (‘Recent’ in the long history of philosophy can mean a few centuries.) But the historical precedent for narrative in philosophy isn’t its only justification. Where the structure of folklore diverges from the philosophic tradition is perhaps where its impact can be most useful. Folklore is full of magical metamorphosis. It casts its spell, and I think we ought to let it. The most powerful canon-expansion will move beyond mere addition to methodological transformation.

F olklore provides a new model of enquiry that has the power to transform the discipline in exciting ways, re-enlivening it from the inside. What could philosophy look like beyond the assumptions of contemporary academia? How can folklore shed light on alternative ways of reasoning, raise new puzzles, and expand the range of answers in view?

Ludwig Edelstein, a scholar of Plato, argued that storytelling plays an important explanatory role: through stories, we ‘counteract sorcery by sorcery’. He contends that the human search for meaning is best realised when we engage both our rational and our emotive natures. Since ‘both these parts of the human soul must be equally tended by the philosopher’, stories are a valuable tool to impart ideas with maximal impact.

This value is instrumental as we seek to broaden philosophy’s reach beyond a narrow specialised few. Folklore is a medium of expansive inclusion – it transcends class and educational boundaries. As the fiction writer Karel Čapek noted: ‘a true folk fairy tale does not originate in being taken down by the collector of folklore, but in being told by a grandmother to her grandchildren’. It is intended for wide engagement, and its familiar and entertaining structure makes complex ideas accessible to a range of audiences throughout different disciplines, and beyond academe.

Another notable feature of folklore is its emphasis on collectivity. For most, the word ‘philosophy’ conjures a lineage of geniuses: your Aristotles, your Sartres, your Kants. The discipline has valorised individuals atomistically, framing their revolutionary contributions in a vacuum. In recent years, many have cast aspersions on this narrative. The sociologist Sal Restivo declares : ‘[I]f you give me a genius, I will give you a social network.’ Increasingly, there is a trend toward recognising progress as a matter of collaboration rather than atomistic ownership.

Storytelling engages with the messy and the real in a way that the pristine structures of philosophy struggle to do

Folklore has a long tradition in this spirit. In Sitting at the Feet of the Past (1992), a collection of essays on the North American folktale, Steve Sanfield writes: ‘Nobody owns these stories … They change each time they’re told.’ Tales are inherently communal, having no single author. Listeners alter the stories, misremember them, embellish them, and change their meaning with each retelling. In this manner, it is a mode of thinking collectively and through time, a collaborative enquiry that persists through centuries.

The generational model of folklore also contrasts with academic philosophy’s long-lamented blindness to its own historicity, to context and to contingency. As the literary scholar Karl Kroeber observed in Retelling/Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times (1992):

[A]ll significant narratives are retold and are meant to be retold – even though every retelling is a making anew. Story can thus preserve ideas, beliefs, and convictions without permitting them to harden into abstract dogma. Narrative allows us to test our ethical principles in our imaginations where we can engage them in the uncertainties and confusion of contingent circumstance.

Folklore is openly historical, and openly in flux. Tales evolve with the contributions of successive tellers, and yet, in what persists, we are able to witness thought processes that approach timeless resonance. This method offers advantages over the European philosophical model, which can obscure the wider history of ideas in its insistence on abstracted and individual pursuit of the universal. Storytelling is unafraid to engage with the contextual, the messy and the specificity of the real in a way that the pristine structures of philosophy struggle to do. As such, it provides a more thoroughly examined path to what might be called the universal. Folklore is both a reflection of the Now from which it is being told, and a record of what persists throughout aeons of successive nows. To borrow Kroeber’s metaphor, folklore preserves ideas softly . It’s putting flowers in a vase rather than drying them – watery narrative is always moving, always in flux, so the ideas stay green and do not become brittle.

The ending of Pretty Maid Ibronka has always moved me. She stands at the village graveyard, a young girl facing down the devil in the guise of a sophisticated man. One expects her to scream, to run or to fight. Instead, she tells him a story, one that contains the truth. She begins at the start of the tale itself, hijacking the role of narrator, tying the story into a loop. It is only when she does so that the devil is vanquished, and his victim’s lives restored.

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Return of the descendants

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Why Are Folktales Important?

Folktales can be used to help children study other cultural traditions, model positive character traits, learn about the consequences of decision making, and even develop stronger reading skills

Our collection of folktales from the world’s great oral traditions, was developed to immerse children in timeless stories and help them discover a love of reading. These highly engaging stories represent a range of diverse story traditions. We’ve collected folktales from China, Africa, Latin America, India, Europe, Malaysia, the Middle East, Native America, and even remote places like the Marshall Islands or Siberia.

As Margaret Read MacDonald writes, “A folktale is a story that has been passed from person to person.” For more information about what is a folktale, you might go to What-is-a-folktale .

Margaret also cites there are many forms and genres of folktales including:

Animal Stories

Legends 

Urban Legends

Since folktales have been passed down through the oral tradition, they were honed for listening, so they were easy to remember and share. As a result, folktales make it easier for children to differentiate characters, follow a plotline or recall a sequence of events. Not surprisingly, working with folktales can also help children develop the critical reading skills of phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension needed to meet the requirements defined in the Common Core Standards for Reading.  

These classic stories are not only highly entertaining, they also play an important role in passing along core values or character traits. Folktales were often employed to share a common history, to reinforce cultural values, or highlight important traditions. 

When people belonged to a tribe or lived in a small village, by necessity they needed to be able to get along well under a variety of circumstances and minimize conflict. Typically, only the chief, a high priest or a shaman could confront someone over committing an offense. As a result, stories were often shared to intentionally clarify how a transgression had occurred. Hopefully, the person at fault would then recognize the parallel between their actions and a character’s mistakes in the story.

As folktales were passed down over generations, they modeled behaviors and helped reinforce expectations about how to live a meaningful life. Over time, folktales subtly incorporated character traits like caring, resourcefulness, trust, or courage into the fabric of the stories.

Folktales also model the elements of effective decision-making. Characters in folktales invariably encounter conflicts that require them to make difficult decisions and take action to resolve a conflict. These decisions then lead to clear consequences that carry a message: making a “good” or more responsible decision results in positive outcomes while making a “poor” or irresponsible decision inevitably leads to negative outcomes. As a result, folktales can demonstrate the importance of making difficult decisions under challenging circumstances. Engaging children in discussions about the consequences of making poorly thought-out or rash decisions, helps them see the importance of making effective decisions in their lives. 

You might want to learn about the   common characteristics of folktales .

Folktales by their nature celebrate diversity. By experiencing stories from different cultures, children can discover valuable insights about another culture’s values, beliefs, history, practices, and customs. When children learn about diverse cultural traditions, they not only broaden their view of the world, they frequently develop a greater appreciation of their own family’s heritage. 

Folktales can be used in a variety of ways to help children: 

Develop stronger reading skills

Study other cultures

Model character traits

Appreciate other traditions

Learn about decision making 

Explore new ways of seeing the world

Discover a love of stories

As you explore the diverse stories included in our folktale collection, please remember that all of these timeless stories share a common thread: they were preserved so they could be shared over and over again with each new generation. Learn more about using folktales in the classroom ,  or check out Margaret Read MacDonald ’s award-winning book Teaching with Story .

We also have over 45 differentiated lesson plans with worksheets that are correlated to the common core standards for Kindergarten through 2nd grade. These lesson plans and worksheets can be downloaded for free.

Definition of Folklore

Folklore is a collection of fictional stories about animals and people, of cultural myths , jokes, songs, tales, and even quotes. It is a description of culture, which has been passed down verbally from generation to generation, though many are now in written form. Folklore is also known as “folk literature,” or “oral traditions.”

Folklore depicts the way main characters manage their everyday life events, including conflicts or crises. Simply, folk literature is about individual experiences from a particular society. The study of folk tradition and knowledge is called folkloristics. Although some folklores depict universal truths, unfounded beliefs and superstitions are also basic elements of folklore tradition.

Types of Folklore

Following are the major forms of folklore:

• Fairy Tales
• Folk dramas
• Proverbs , charms, and riddles
• Use of Folklore by Children

Examples of Folklore in Literature

Example #1: rudyard kipling.

Rudyard Kipling was keenly interested in folklore, as he has written many English works based on folklore such as, Rewards and Fairies and Puck of Pook’s Hill . His experiences in Indian environment have led him to create several works about Indian themes and tradition. Since Kipling has lived a great deal of life in Indian regions, he was much familiar with the Indian languages.

Kipling’s popular work, The Jungle Book , consists of plenty of stories about traditional folktales. He also has Indian themes in his work, Just So Stories, in which he has given many characters recognizable names related to Indian languages. Helen Bannerman has also penned an Indian themed folktale, Little Black Sambo, during the same period.

Example #2: Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry was a politician, attorney and planter, who gained popularity as an orator when Americans were struggling for independence. He is well known for his speech in the House of Burgesses in 1775 in the church of Saint Joseph. The House was undecided about whether they need to mobilize and take military action against encroaching military forces of England. Henry gave his arguments in favor of American forces’ mobilization. After forty-two years, William Wirt, Henry’s first biographer, working from different oral histories and stories, reconstructed the sayings of Henry, outlining the folk traditions he inherited and passed on.

Example #3: A. K. Ramanujan

A. K. Ramanujan has written a lot about context sensitivity as a theme in many cultural essays, classical poetry, and Indian folklore. For example, in his works Three Hundred Ramayanas, and Where Mirrors are Windows , he talks about intertextual quality of written and oral Indian literature. His popular essay , Where Mirrors Are Windows: Toward an Anthology of Reflections, and commentaries done on Indian folktales, including Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages, and The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, Present Perfect examples of Indian folk literature studies.

Example #4: Alan Garner

Alan Garner is a renowned English novelist popular for writing fantasy tales and retellings of traditional English folk tales. His works are mainly rooted in history, landscape, and folklore of his native country Cheshire. One of such children’s novels is, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: A Tale of Alderley , which took a local legend from The Wizard of the Edge , and described landscapes and folklore of neighboring Alderley Edge, where Alan had grown up. The novel is set in Alderley Edge in Cheshire and Macclesfield. This is a very good example of the use of folktales in literature.

Function of Folklore

The main purpose of folklore is to convey a moral lesson and present useful information and everyday life lessons in an easy way for the common people to understand. Folk tales sugarcoat the lessons of hard life in order to give the audience pointers about how they should behave. It is one of the best mediums to pass on living culture or traditions to future generations.

Currently, many forms of folk literature have been transformed into books and manuscripts, which we see in the forms of novels, histories, dramas, stories, lyric poems, and sermons. Folk literature is, however, not merely a carrier of cultural values; rather, it is also an expression of self-reflection. It serves as a platform to hold high moral ground without any relevance to present day reality. Instead, writers use it as a commentary or satire on current political and social reality. In the modern academic world, folklores and folktales are studied to understand ancient literature and civilizations.

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A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF FOLKTALES: A MEANS TO AN END

2009, The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics

Folktales have been regarded as the simplest form of narrative and tales from various cultures have been analyzed in terms of their structure. The structural analysis of tales can be claimed to begin with Propp's (1958/1968) Morphology of the folktale. Following Propp's groundbreaking morphological classification of Russian tales, studies of structural typology of folktales from different cultures have given rise to story-grammars and led to the heyday of narratology. However, with the growing interest in narrative as a social and psychological phenomenon, structural analyses of stories have come under attack. It is contended that although the explorations of story structures have resulted in interesting descriptions of different models, what is lacking is an explanation of how formal patterns are related to the story's content. Therefore, more recent works in narratological research have called for a narrative analysis that goes beyond structures. This article revisits a structure analysis of folktales. Using a Myanmar (Burmese) folktale as a tutor text, it advocates an investigation of the relationship between form, function and field of a tale, and suggests a structural analysis as a means to gain insights into the cultural determination of the narrative motif and the social purpose of storytelling.

Related Papers

This is a review of a book containing a Narrative Analysis of the plots of 27 Burmese folk tales in English translation. As applied here, Narrative Analysis is an insightful set of research methodologies to discover regular features of plot structures; however, it does not include the aspects of Textual Analysis that dig deeply into the structures and features of the original language. In this book, no actual features of the Burmese language are discussed. Both Narrative Analysis and Textual Analysis fall into the same broad set of methodologies and inquiries that are covered by the term Discourse Analysis. This book is valuable in understanding and guiding analysis of narratives following in the tradition of Vladimir Propp and his study of the morphology of Russian fairy tales. The book proposes a clear, imitable method that allows comparison of folk tale structure using form, function and field. It also suggests ways that Narrative Analysts and Folklorists can examine cultural influences reflected in the folktales.

Austin: University of Texas

Ijahsss Journal

The objectives of this article is to identify, define and describe the selected folktale theories that are prevalent in the narrative prose analysis. They are suitable in the analysis of myths, fables, legends, fairy and tall tales. This is a form of narrative that is regarded as a fiction. Folktale provides on opportunity for artistic creativity and actualisation of plot structure, images and dramatic delivery. The variation, innovation and imagination on the part of the performers are evident. The morphological analysis based on Propp'smodel, identifies functions and sequences. The structural analysis of Dunde's model, emphasizes motifemes and their variation all motifs. The semantic analysis of Scheub's model identifies refrains, core-images and linking techniques. The thematic analysis of Levi-Strauss concentrates on the syntagmatic opposition to reveal structure, and meaning. Lastly the Thwala model of plot structure or phrasal demarcation highlights six phases and their content. The descriptive and explanation researches are adopted for this research work.

Hasina Fajrin R

Makassar folktales, one of local indigenous in South Sulawesi need to preserve and to study in order to maintain its existence. One way to analyze the folktales is using Alan Dundes theory. Dundes proposes motifeme sequences like lack, lack liquidated, deceit, deception, task, task accomplished, interdiction, violation, consequences, and attempted escape to describe the structural typology of the folktales. The writing is library research and applies descriptive qualitative method that relies on linguistic and employing meaning based of data analysis, whilst, the object is Rupama , a book written by Zainuddin Hakim. After analyzing it, the writer finds that the shortest structure of motifeme consists of lack (L) and lack liquidated (LL). Furthermore, folktales also represent that Makassar people believe that evil deed is always punished directly or indirectly. One interesting thing after analyzing the sequences, the attempted escape motifeme is only found once in the folktale. It sh...

dr. Bódis Zoltán (PhD)

In order to properly evaluate Soe Marlar Lwin's book that is excellently structured, rich in references, and provides a well-chosen text selection, we need to give a short overview of the historical 'currents' in folktale research. On the one hand, her book entitled Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales directs the attention of international folktale research to the specificities of Burmese folktales, and on the other hand, the textual force, the clear cut and excellent use of concepts, the articulate and well-organized argument contribute to a kind of approach that ultimately enriches the reference literature of folktale research. By using the most important theoretical outcomes of modern text centered folktale research it provides the possibility for the Burmese tales, and tales in general as a complex genre, to become worthy of attention even for the postmodern approach – an approach focusing on orality, multidimensionality, and performativity.

Andrew Wiget

This study grew out of a concern that current deep structure postulations were all only partially successful because they did not illustrate the complex relationship between all the elements of a tale's deep and surface structures. To illustrate the value of a more complex and discriminating analytical method and the information it can yield, I collected twenty-nine variants of the popular Eskomo story of several girls who were wedded to nonhuman husbands (the most accessible variant is "The Whale and Eagle Husbands," in Thompson's Tales of the North American Indians). The method involved three steps: first, devel--oping a mode of description which would provide accountability for all units and relationslips in the surface structure of any variant text; second, constructing a model hypothetical base tale which would reflect in detail the surface structure complexity of the variant texts; and third, expanding a simple deep structure formula to correlate it with the ...

Marvels and Tales

Terence Patrick Murphy

Renata Moos

Some fairy tales are known worldwide, but in a variety of forms. This study attempts to seek intercultural differences in the structure and in the narrative of fairy tales, through the analysis of the Cinderella fairy tale versions from Scotland, Russia and Hungary. The structural analysis applies the Proppian method (1995). This morphological analysis proves the theory of Propp regarding the structural unity of the folktales, despite their differences in content and idiom. At the same time, some definitions of the functions as basic elements of the structural schema appear to be arguable. The rhetorical analysis of the tales is performed by the storygraph method of Söter (1988) to discover cultural influence on the narratives. Although, some differences were detected, in general all investigated fairy tales of this study resemble the Western rhetorical style. Overall, the results suggest that the influence of the cultural context are more traceable in the rhetorical patterns of the...

peter gilet

looking at folktales using Propp's (modified) paradigm.

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• Myths, Legends, & Folktales

Writing Folktales What are the key characteristics of a folktale?

In this 6-8 lesson, students will analyze the characteristics of traditional folktales to write an original tale. They will use elements of folktales to develop their story and strengthen work through the writing process.

Get Printable Version   Copy to Google Drive

Lesson Content

• Preparation
• Instruction

Learning Objectives  

Students will: 

• Ask and answer questions about classic folktales.
• Recall details from a text and illustrations.
• Identify, examine, analyze, and evaluate folktales.
• Incorporate the elements of traditional folktales in original folktales.
• Write for literary purposes and for a variety of audiences: peers, teachers, parents, school-wide community, and beyond.
• Prewrite, draft, revise, and proofread as part of the strategic approach to effective writing.

Standards Alignment

National Core Arts Standards National Core Arts Standards

MA:Cr1.1.6 Formulate variations of goals and solutions for media artworks by practicing chosen creative processes, such as sketching, improvising and 

MA:Cr1.1.7 Produce a variety of ideas and solutions for media artworks through application of chosen inventive processes, such as concept modeling and prototyping.

MA:Cr1.1.8 Generate ideas, goals, and solutions for original media artworks through application of focused creative processes, such as divergent thinking and experimenting.

MA:Cr2.1.6 Form, share, and test ideas, plans, and models to prepare for media arts productions.

MA:Cr2.1.7 Discuss, test, and assemble ideas, plans, and models for media arts productions, considering the artistic goals and the presentation.

MA:Cr2.1.8 Generate ideas, goals, and solutions for original media artworks through application of focused creative processes, such as divergent thinking and experimenting

MA:Pr5.1.6c Demonstrate adaptability using tools and techniques in standard and experimental ways in constructing media artworks. 

MA:Pr5.1.6c Demonstrate adaptability using tools and techniques in standard and experimental ways to achieve an assigned purpose in constructing media artworks. 

MA:Pr5.1.6c Demonstrate adaptability using tools, techniques and content in standard and experimental ways to communicate intent in the production of media artworks.

MA:Pr6.1.6a Analyze various presentation formats and fulfill various tasks and defined processes in the presentation and/or distribution of media artworks.

MA:Pr6.1.7a   Evaluate various presentation formats in order to fulfill various tasks and defined processes in the presentation and/or distribution of media artworks.

MA:Pr6.1.8a Design the presentation and distribution of media artworks through multiple formats and/or contexts.

TH:Pr6.1.6.a Adapt a drama/theatre work and present it informally for an audience.

TH:Pr6.1.7.a Participate in rehearsals for a drama/theatre work that will be shared with an audience.

TH:Pr6.1.8.a Perform a rehearsed drama/theatre work for an audience. 

VA:Cr2.1.6a Demonstrate openness in trying new ideas, materials, methods, and approaches in making works of art and design.

VA:Cr2.1.7a Demonstrate persistence in developing skills with various materials, methods, and approaches in creating works of art or design. 

VA:Cr2.1.8a Demonstrate willingness to experiment, innovate, and take risks to pursue ideas, forms, and meanings that emerge in the process of artmaking or designing.

Common Core State Standards Common Core State Standards

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to convey experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach. 

ELA-LITERACY.W.6.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grade 7 here.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.7.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.A Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.C Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence, signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another, and show the relationships among experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.D Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.E Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grade 8 here.)

ELA-LITERACY.W.8.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Recommended Student Materials

Editable Documents : Before sharing these resources with students, you must first save them to your Google account by opening them, and selecting “Make a copy” from the File menu. Check out Sharing Tips or Instructional Benefits when implementing Google Docs and Google Slides with students.

• Vocabulary: Folktales  
• Qualities of Folktales
• Types of Folktales
• Criteria for Success: Original Folktale
• Original Folktale Tips  
• Original Folktale Organizer
• Slide: Original Folktale Template
• Original Folktale Book Template
• HablaCloud: ChromeMP3 Recorder

Teacher Background

Teachers should be familiar with traditional folktales and be able to identify common elements. Preview and familiarize yourself with the digital tools related to the lesson. Display an example folktale text around the room or visit American Folklore for digital text examples. Explore Art and Life of William Johnson and Brothers Grimm . 

Book Recommendations:

Cole, Joanna. Best Loved Folktales of the World . Wilmington, NC: Anchor Publishing, 1983.

Mallet, Jerry and Keith Polette. World Folktales . Fort Atkinson: Alleyside Press, 1994.

Student Prerequisites

Students should have an understanding of the peer editing process. They should be familiar with basic story elements including characters (flat versus round), characterization, plot, setting, and dialogue. 

Accessibility Notes

Modify handouts and give preferential seating for visual presentations. Allow extra time for task completion.

• Begin by sharing a traditional folktale with students. You may use personal, school, or digital books. Read or even act out the folktale.
• Create a class generated summary to check for understanding.
• Without naming the characteristics, help students determine the story elements from the folktale: What were the characters like in the folktale I just read? Describe the lives lived by the characters. Did the characters seem to have depth? Would you say they were well developed? What was the characters ’ speech like? You may want to record answers and use the Qualities of Folktales resource.
• Now that students have been introduced or re-introduced to folktales, prepare to help them identify, analyze, and evaluate the genre. Introduce and display  Vocabulary: Folktales . Tell students to reference it, as necessary, throughout the lesson.
• Review the vocabulary terms as a group. Provide examples of each. An example of “traditional” might be an annual family reunion or baking cookies for a special occasion. Ask students to provide additional examples to demonstrate understanding. (Note: clarify the meaning of motif as it is closely related to the main idea. Main idea that it is the “main reason” a text is written. Asking questions can help students monitor and clarify their thinking. Why did the author write this? What does he or she want me to know? What patterns do you notice in the story? )
• Explain that folktales come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Define, discuss, and display the many Types of Folktales . 
• If time permits, share examples of the different types of folktales.  “The Princess and the Frog” is an example of a fairy tale, which is a type of folktale.
• Now explain to students that they will be writing original folktales; but before doing so, review the Criteria for Success: Original Folktale and Original Folktale Tips . 
• Allow students time to brainstorm original ideas for their folktales. Use the Original Folktale Tips resource for writing support. 
• Give students ample time to create their folktales using the Original Folktale Organizer . Confer with students to provide feedback on their writing. Encourage them to use the print and digital text folktales as references. 
• Once students have completed a rough draft, have partners revise and edit each other’s drafts. This process may repeat itself as students apply suggestions and revise their work. Remind students of the elements characteristic of a folktale. Have students refer to the Original Folktale Criteria for Success during peer edits.
• Have students make revisions as necessary and produce their final draft. Once students are finished, have them create a digital book using presentation software like Slide: Original Folktale Template or Powtoons . They can also create a book with original illustrations using the Original Folktale Book Template . They may use colored construction paper, white copy paper, crayons, markers, glue, scissors, watercolors, tempera paint, string, and a hole punch to create a book. Students can type or handwrite their folktales on a template. Then create a front and back cover using the colored construction paper. Compile the contents and covers, punch holes near the spine, and tie string through each hole to secure the book.
• Add music and voiceover to books made with media tools. Students can use royalty-free sites like Bensound to include music or add voiceover using the voice recorder or microphone tools on student devices. HablaCloud: ChromeMP3 Recorder is a Google Extension option if using a Chromebook.

Reflect  

• Ask students to share or perform their folktales for the class. As a group, provide positive feedback for each folktale.
• Lead a class discussion that summarizes the folktale lesson. Point out key points, orally assess understanding, and ask students to express their likes, dislikes, and any lingering concerns. 
• Assess students’ knowledge of folktales using the Criteria for Success: Original Folktale .

Original Writer

Andria Cole

JoDee Scissors

November 1, 2021

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Collection Myths, Legends, & Folktales

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On the Importance of Fairy Tales

Should we continue to read these frightening stories to our children.

Posted June 6, 2014 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Fairy tales have been with us for a long time. Some of the earliest were written in a Neapolitan dialect by Giambattista Basile in Italy in the early 17th century: Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (Neapolitan for "The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones").

These original versions of stories like Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella are more violent and more overtly sexual than the later versions. They were taken up again, made more respectable, and added to by the Brothers Grimm in Germany and also by Charles Perrault in France in his Mother Goose Stories.

Some of these stories, like Cinderella, are truly universal, existing all over the world in all languages from Zulu to Swedish, with slight variations: the glass slipper may become a grass one, for example, but in them, surely, we find proof of our common humanity.

Still, is this a good reason why we should, you might wonder, continue to read these old and, after all, often frightening tales (children lost in woods and found by a witch who fattens them up to eat them in Hansel and Gretel, or wolves chopped open by hunters so that grandma can escape in Little Red Riding Hood) to our little ones?

Yet it seems very important to me, perhaps even more important today, that these ancient stories should be repeated again and again. The violence within them is always contained within a satisfying structure with a reversal, and the requisite happy ending. Here, good and evil are so conveniently and completely separate. There are no grey areas in the fairy tale. The appearance of the villain allows the child to freely project his own violent feelings onto these separate and satisfyingly wicked beings. Unable to express anger or hatred directly toward those adults on whom the child depends, he/she can displace this natural aggression and give free reign to it personified by the villain: the step-mother, the wicked wolf, or the witch.

At the same time, having split good and evil so completely and satisfyingly the child can identify with the good hero or heroine. He/she can beat his way valiantly through the thick forest to rescue sleeping beauty or magically acquire the carriage, grand dress, and glass slippers to enchant the prince. The child can identify with the small, the weak or the downtrodden (little Cinderella, sweeping the hearth, for example) who, in a gratifying reversal, is able to overcome the odds and triumph, marrying the prince. These tales thus permit both the expression of natural violence and at the same time preserve that essential part of life without which the child cannot prosper: hope.

This reversal that so often lies at the heart of any good story (think of Jane Eyre who ultimately marries Mr. Rochester, a damaged Mr. Rochester to boot, in Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece) is particularly satisfying to the small, helpless and completely dependent child. Here, in these ancient tales, the small boy or girl can through the hero/heroine triumph over the large and often dangerous-seeming adults around him or her.

Perhaps even more importantly, the fact that these tales are read or told by the very adults that the child both loves and fears enables this transaction to take place so comfortingly again and again within the safe perimeters of the home. There is something essential about the repetition of the same words which soothes the child, nurtures the imagination and assuages his fears.

So let us take up these ancient stories and lift our children and grandchildren on our laps to hear them once more.

I am the author of many books, including the recent Dreaming for Freud.

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The Importance of Folktales in African Culture

• Posted by    vanessa moahi
•  Nov 20, 2022
• Copied to clipboard

In many African societies, an important aspect of traditional education is concerned with teaching oral literature using folktales, riddles and proverbs, which aim at molding character and providing children with moral values like honesty, integrity, courage and solidarity.

Africans, like most cultures elsewhere in the world, have a set of values which they consider worthwhile and necessary for the preservation and wellbeing of their culture. Folktales are a form of oral literature, which draw their material from the realities of the society and reflect peoples’ values and world views. As a result, folktales are often used as a vehicle for transmitting and preserving shared values and collective experiences.

For several generations, stories from Africa have traditionally been passed down by word of mouth. Often after a hard day’s work, the adults would gather the children together by moonlight, around a village fire and tell stories. Usually, the stories are meant to prepare young people for life, and so each story teaches a moral lesson.

In African folktales, the stories reflect the culture where diverse types of animals abound. The animals and birds are often accorded human attributes, so it is not uncommon to find animals talking, singing or demonstrating human characteristics such as greed, jealousy, honesty, etc. Contemporary African folktales are imaginatively refined for the purpose of injecting new meanings, ideas and values, based on society’s contemporary experiences and relations.

Musarwa Chaka, a retired farmer in Zimbabwe, fondly remembers his experiences with African folktales as a child, “When we were growing up, our parents could not afford television sets and there were no parks with play areas for us, so your boredom was your responsibility. We had to entertain ourselves basically. So often in the evenings, our parents or grandparents would gather us around a big fire and tell us stories. That was entertainment for us, but it also taught us a lot of critical life lessons, even though the stories were mostly about animals. Be that as it was, what was interesting is the fact that regardless of where you are from in the country, we had all heard the same stories, with the same characters!”

African folktales are believed to have the power to hold the community together, that is, the ancestors, the living and those yet to be born. This is because they communicate morals and traditions to the young, preparing them for real life obstacles. Many African folktales belong to a particular region, meaning that the stories often reflect the storytellers’ culture. People portray, through the stories, not only their experiences but also their knowledge of the plants and animals around them.

According to Shatani Murenga, a nurse in Gaborone, Botswana, “In the olden days, our parents and grandparents used folktales to convey strong messages to us, often warnings and to teach us how to lead better lives than they themselves did. For instance, one key message I recall is using mermaid folktales to teach us about the dangers of playing by huge waterbodies like rivers, because naturally as young girls and boys we were curious and care-free, so we often played by and swam by dangerous waterbodies. Our parents would tell us scary stories that would send strong messages to us and it often worked! So, folktales were sincerely important, they were not just for entertainment or to pass time.”

Owing to the fact that these folktales reflected people’s values and outlook on the world, reading and learning about these stories from an outsider’s perspective helps us understand  such communities and their values.

vanessa moahi

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