Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as tales, myths, legends, proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas, weddings, folk dances, and initiation rites.
A fairy tale is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, pixies, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, magic, and enchantments.
Kunio Yanagita was a Japanese author, scholar, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a change in his career. His pursuit of this led to his eventual establishment of Japanese native folkloristics, or minzokugaku, as an academic field in Japan. As a result, he is often considered to be the father of modern Japanese folklore studies.
The folklore of India encompasses the folklore of the nation of India and the Indian subcontinent. India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. Given this diversity, it is difficult to generalize the vast folklore of India as a unit.
Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used varying descriptions for oral literature or folk literature. A broad conceptualization refers to it as literature characterized by oral transmission and the absence of any fixed form. It includes the stories, legends, and history passed through generations in a spoken form.
The "swan maiden" story is a name in folkloristics used to refer to three kinds of stories: those where one of the characters is a bird-maiden, in which she can appear either as a bird or as a woman; those in which one of the elements of the narrative is the theft of the feather-robe belonging to a bird-maiden, though it is not the most important theme in the story; and finally the most commonly referred to motif, and also the most archaic in origin: those stories in which the main theme, among several mixed motifs, is that of a man who finds the bird-maiden bathing and steals her feathered robe, which leads to him becoming married to the bird-maiden. Later, the maiden recovers the robe and flies away, returning to the sky, and the man may seek her again. It is one of the most widely distributed motifs in the world, most probably being many millennia old, and the best known supernatural wife figure in narratives.
How Ian Dìreach got the Blue Falcon is a Scottish fairy tale, collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands. He recorded it from a quarryman in Knockderry, Roseneath, named Angus Campbell.
"The Four Skillful Brothers" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is Aarne-Thompson type 653.
The Sleeping Prince is a Greek fairy tale collected by Georgios A. Megas in Folktales of Greece.
Grateful dead is both a motif and a group of related folktales present in many cultures throughout the world.
Hainteny is a traditional form of Malagasy oral literature and poetry, involving heavy use of metaphor. It is associated primarily with the Merina people of Madagascar. In its use of metaphor and allusion it resembles another type of poetry, the Malay pantun, and Fox suggests "it seems likely the Merina brought with them a Malayo-Polynesian poetic tradition" to Madagascar. The Ibonia, an epic poem related for centuries in different versions across Madagascar, reflects the value placed on the linguistic skills celebrated in the hainteny tradition, and offers insight into the diverse mythologies and beliefs of traditional Malagasy communities.
Malagasy mythology is rooted in oral history and has been transmitted by storytelling, notably the Andriambahoaka epic, including the Ibonia cycle. At least 6% of Madagascar are adherents of the religion, which is known as Fomba Gasy, and surveys show it is likely at least half practice some aspects of it. Adherence to Fomba Gasy is high amongst the Sakalava people, as they are reluctant to convert to faiths of foreign origin.
Jack is an English hero and archetypal stock character appearing in multiple legends, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes.
The literature of Madagascar encompasses the oral and written literary arts of the Malagasy people.
Harold Scheub was an American Africanist, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities Emeritus in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Scheub has recorded and compiled oral literature from across southern Africa.
The Black Cloth is a collection of African folk tales by Bernard Binlin Dadié. It was first published in 1955, in French; an English translation by Karen C. Hatch was published in 1987. The stories were published at a time when many African writers were creating a new outlet for traditional African art, converting oral literature into written literature, and adapting writing to convey the tradition of orality.
Umamba, Umamba kaMakula or uMamba kaMaquba is a Zulu folktale about a youth born to a mother that hides him within a snakeskin. He marries a human woman who disenchants him.
"The Story of Prince Sobur" is an Indian fairy tale. It tells the story of a princess who summons into her room a prince named Sobur, or variations thereof, by the use of a magical fan. The story contains similarities to the European (French) fairy tale The Blue Bird, and variants have been collected from South Asia and in Eastern Africa.
King Ravohimena and the Magic Grains is a Malagasy folktale, first published by ethnologist Jeanne de Longchamps in 1955. It is related to the theme of the calumniated wife and is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
The Child with a Moon on his Chest is a South African folktale from the Sotho people. It is related to the cycle of the Calumniated Wife, and is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
