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141-427: In folklore , a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore , descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy , or in spiritism as

282-499: A séance . Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, haint, phantom, poltergeist , shade , specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon , and ghoul . The belief in the existence of an afterlife , as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead, is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms , and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic —are specifically designed to rest

423-463: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by

564-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in

705-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,

846-489: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how

987-659: A compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk

1128-400: A ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own ghostly double or " fetch " is a related omen of death. The impetus of haunting is commonly considered an unnatural death. White ladies were reported to appear in many rural areas, and supposed to have died tragically or suffered trauma in life. White Lady legends are found around the world. Common to many of them

1269-516: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on

1410-605: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes

1551-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought

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1692-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in

1833-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond

1974-406: A specific period to atone for their transgressions in life. Their penance was generally related to their sin. For example, the ghost of a man who had been abusive to his servants was condemned to tear off and swallow bits of his own tongue; the ghost of another man, who had neglected to leave his cloak to the poor, was condemned to wear the cloak, now "heavy as a church tower". These ghosts appeared to

2115-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from

2256-476: A variety of illnesses to the action of ghosts, while others were caused by gods or demons. There was widespread belief in ghosts in ancient Egyptian culture . The Hebrew Bible contains few references to ghosts, associating spiritism with forbidden occult activities cf. Deuteronomy 18:11. The most notable reference is in the First Book of Samuel (I Samuel 28:3–19 KJV), in which a disguised King Saul has

2397-572: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with

2538-792: Is ahma , Old Norse has andi m., önd f.), it appears to be a dental suffix derivative of pre-Germanic *ghois-d-oz ('fury, anger'), which is comparable to Sanskrit héḍas ('anger') and Avestan zōižda - ('terrible, ugly'). The prior Proto-Indo-European form is reconstructed as *ǵʰéys-d-os , from the root *ǵʰéys- , which is reflected in Old Norse geisa ('to rage') and *geiski ('fear'; cf. geiskafullr 'full of fear'), in Gothic usgaisjan ('to terrify') and usgaisnan ('to be terrified'), as well as in Avestan zōiš- (cf. zōišnu 'shivering, trembling'). The Germanic word

2679-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge

2820-578: Is a Scots word for ghost , spectre , or apparition . It appeared in Scottish Romanticist literature, and acquired the more general or figurative sense of portent or omen . In 18th- to 19th-century Scottish literature, it also applied to aquatic spirits. The word has no commonly accepted etymology; the OED notes "of obscure origin" only. An association with the verb writhe was the etymology favored by J. R. R. Tolkien . Tolkien's use of

2961-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in

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3102-678: Is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which

3243-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,

3384-485: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in

3525-430: Is dead but her refusal would mean his damnation. This reflects a popular British belief that the dead haunted their lovers if they took up with a new love without some formal release. " The Unquiet Grave " expresses a belief even more widespread, found in various locations over Europe: ghosts can stem from the excessive grief of the living, whose mourning interferes with the dead's peaceful rest. In many folktales from around

3666-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this

3807-541: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that

3948-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within

4089-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of

4230-408: Is no-one left to remember the one who died. In many cultures, malignant, restless ghosts are distinguished from the more benign spirits involved in ancestor worship. Ancestor worship typically involves rites intended to prevent revenants , vengeful spirits of the dead, imagined as starving and envious of the living. Strategies for preventing revenants may either include sacrifice , i.e., giving

4371-525: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that

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4512-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist

4653-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,

4794-531: Is recorded as masculine only, but likely continues a neuter s -stem. The original meaning of the Germanic word would thus have been an animating principle of the mind , in particular capable of excitation and fury (compare óðr ). In Germanic paganism , " Germanic Mercury ", and the later Odin , was at the same time the conductor of the dead and the "lord of fury" leading the Wild Hunt . Besides denoting

4935-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art

5076-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at

5217-433: Is that there is no proof that ghosts exist. Their existence is impossible to falsify , and ghost hunting has been classified as pseudoscience . Despite centuries of investigation, there is no scientific evidence that any location is inhabited by the spirits of the dead. Historically, certain toxic and psychoactive plants (such as datura and hyoscyamus niger ), whose use has long been associated with necromancy and

5358-669: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly

5499-415: Is the concept of a fetch , the visible ghost or spirit of a person yet alive. A notion of the transcendent , supernatural , or numinous , usually involving entities like ghosts, demons , or deities , is a cultural universal . In pre-literate folk religions , these beliefs are often summarized under animism and ancestor worship . Some people believe the ghost or spirit never leaves Earth until there

5640-610: Is the stage of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family that was spoken c.  2500 BC  – c.  500 BC , after the branch had diverged from Proto-Indo-European but before it evolved into Proto-Germanic during the First Germanic Sound Shift . The less precise term Germanic , which appears in etymologies , dictionaries , etc., loosely refers to a language spoken in

5781-677: Is the theme of losing a child or husband and a sense of purity, as opposed to the Lady in Red ghost that is mostly attributed to a jilted lover or prostitute. The White Lady ghost is often associated with an individual family line or regarded as a harbinger of death similar to a banshee . Legends of ghost ships have existed since the 18th century; most notable of these is the Flying Dutchman . This theme has been used in literature in The Rime of

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5922-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,

6063-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in

6204-842: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to

6345-619: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which

6486-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it

6627-566: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by

6768-493: The Witch of Endor summon the spirit or ghost of Samuel . The soul and spirit were believed to exist after death, with the ability to assist or harm the living, and the possibility of a second death. Over a period of more than 2,500 years, Egyptian beliefs about the nature of the afterlife evolved constantly. Many of these beliefs were recorded in hieroglyph inscriptions, papyrus scrolls and tomb paintings. The Egyptian Book of

6909-405: The abolition of slavery and women's suffrage . By the late 1880s, credibility of the informal movement weakened, due to accusations of fraud among mediums, and formal Spiritualist organizations began to appear. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational Spiritualist churches in the United States and United Kingdom. Spiritism, or French spiritualism, is based on

7050-492: The middle and upper classes, while the corresponding movement in continental Europe and Latin America is known as Spiritism . The religion flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion by periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent Spiritualists were women. Most followers supported causes such as

7191-528: The motif index designation E200–E599 ("Ghosts and other revenants"). The English word ghost continues Old English gāst . Stemming from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz , it is cognate with Old Frisian gāst , Old Saxon gēst , Old Dutch gēst , and Old High German geist . Although this form is not attested in North Germanic and East Germanic languages (the equivalent word in Gothic

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7332-641: The underworld , have been shown to contain anticholinergic compounds that are pharmacologically linked to dementia (specifically DLB ) as well as histological patterns of neurodegeneration . Recent research has indicated that ghost sightings may be related to degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease . Common prescription medication and over-the-counter drugs (such as sleep aids ) may also, in rare instances, cause ghost-like hallucinations, particularly zolpidem and diphenhydramine . Older reports linked carbon monoxide poisoning to ghost-like hallucinations. In folklore studies , ghosts fall within

7473-494: The 1st millennium AD, proposedly at that time developing into the group of Germanic languages —a stricter term for that same proposition, but with an alternative chronography , is Proto-Germanic language . As an identifiable neologism , Germanic parent language appears to have been first used by Frans Van Coetsem in 1994. It also makes appearances in the works of Elżbieta Adamczyk, Jonathan Slocum, and Winfred P. Lehmann . Several historical linguists have pointed towards

7614-500: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined

7755-474: The Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Ghosts are often depicted as being covered in a shroud and/or dragging chains. A place where ghosts are reported is described as haunted , and often seen as being inhabited by spirits of deceased who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property. Supernatural activity inside homes is said to be mainly associated with violent or tragic events in

7896-550: The Dead compiles some of the beliefs from different periods of ancient Egyptian history. In modern times, the fanciful concept of a mummy coming back to life and wreaking vengeance when disturbed has spawned a whole genre of horror stories and films. Ghosts appeared in Homer 's Odyssey and Iliad , in which they were described as vanishing "as a vapor, gibbering and whining into the earth". Homer's ghosts had little interaction with

8037-622: The Germanic Parent Language , Frans Van Coetsem lays out a broad set of phonological characteristics which he considers to be representative of the various stages encompassed by the Germanic parent language: Koivulehto (2002) further defines Pre-Germanic as "[the] language stage that followed the depalatalization of IE palatals (e.g. IE ḱ > PreGmc k ) but preceded the Gmc sound shift "Lautverschiebung", "Grimm's Law", (e.g. k > PGmc χ )." Other rules thought to have affected

8178-702: The Germanic parent language is thus used to encompass both the Pre-Proto-Germanic stage of development preceding the First Germanic Sound Shift (assumed to be contemporary with the Nordic Bronze Age) and that stage traditionally identified as Proto-Germanic up to the beginning of the Common Era . The upper boundary (earliest date) assigned to the Germanic parent language is described as "dialectal Indo-European". In

8319-561: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in

8460-563: The Pre-Germanic stage include Cowgill's law , which describes the process of laryngeal loss known to have occurred in most post-PIE (IE) dialects, and Osthoff's law , which describes rules for the shortening of long vowels, known to have applied in western dialects such as Greek , Latin , and Celtic , but not in Tocharian or Indo-Iranian . Ringe (2006) suggests that it is likely that Osthoff's Law also applied to Germanic, and that

8601-561: The Scottish wraith (of obscure origin), phantom (via French ultimately from Greek phantasma , compare fantasy ) and apparition . The term shade in classical mythology translates Greek σκιά, or Latin umbra , in reference to the notion of spirits in the Greek underworld . The term poltergeist is a German word, literally a "noisy ghost", for a spirit said to manifest itself by invisibly moving and influencing objects. Wraith

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8742-537: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at

8883-603: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve

9024-534: The apparent material and social continuity connecting the cultures of the Nordic Bronze Age (1800 – 500 BC) and the pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe (500 BC – 1 AD) as having implications in regard to the stability and later development of the Germanic language group. The emerging consensus among scholars is that the First Germanic Sound Shift, long considered to be the defining mark in

9165-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This

9306-620: The baths at Chaeronea by the ghost of a murdered man. The ghost's loud and frightful groans caused the people of the town to seal up the doors of the building. Another celebrated account of a haunted house from the ancient classical world is given by Pliny the Younger ( c.  50 AD ). Pliny describes the haunting of a house in Athens , which was bought by the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus , who lived about 100 years before Pliny. Knowing that

9447-507: The body in every feature, even down to clothing the person wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead , which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress. While deceased ancestors are universally regarded as venerable, and often believed to have a continued presence in some form of afterlife ,

9588-412: The building's past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide—sometimes in the recent or ancient past. However, not all hauntings are at a place of a violent death, or even on violent grounds. Many cultures and religions believe the essence of a being, such as the ' soul ', continues to exist. Some religious views argue that the 'spirits' of those who have died have not 'passed over' and are trapped inside

9729-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore

9870-624: The community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality. The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content. Germanic parent language The Germanic parent language ( GPL ), also known as Pre-Germanic Indo-European ( PreGmc ) or Pre-Proto-Germanic ( PPG ),

10011-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of

10152-641: The context for these reported visits by the murdered boy. Haunted houses are featured in the 9th-century Arabian Nights (such as the tale of Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad ). Renaissance magic took a revived interest in the occult , including necromancy . In the era of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, there was frequently a backlash against unwholesome interest in

10293-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With

10434-609: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across

10575-415: The dark arts, typified by writers such as Thomas Erastus . The Swiss Reformed pastor Ludwig Lavater supplied one of the most frequently reprinted books of the period with his Of Ghosts and Spirits Walking By Night. The Child Ballad " Sweet William's Ghost " (1868) recounts the story of a ghost returning to his fiancée begging her to free him from his promise to marry her. He cannot marry her because he

10716-563: The dead food and drink to pacify them, or magical banishment of the deceased to force them not to return. Ritual feeding of the dead is performed in traditions like the Chinese Ghost Festival or the Western All Souls' Day . Magical banishment of the dead is present in many of the world's burial customs . The bodies found in many tumuli ( kurgan ) had been ritually bound before burial, and the custom of binding

10857-422: The dead persists, for example, in rural Anatolia . Nineteenth-century anthropologist James Frazer stated in his classic work The Golden Bough that souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body. Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it appears to have been widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of

10998-469: The dead residing in the spirit world can be contacted by " mediums ", who can then provide information about the afterlife . Spiritualism developed in the United States and reached its peak growth in membership from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-language countries . By 1897, it was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from

11139-436: The dead was believed to hover near the resting place of the corpse, and cemeteries were places the living avoided. The dead were to be ritually mourned through public ceremony, sacrifice, and libations, or else they might return to haunt their families. The ancient Greeks held annual feasts to honor and placate the spirits of the dead, to which the family ghosts were invited, and after which they were "firmly invited to leave until

11280-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in

11421-408: The development of Proto-Germanic , happened as late as 500 BC. Research conducted over the past few decades displays a notable interest in exploring the linguistic and sociohistorical conditions under which this sound shift occurred, and often formulates theories and makes reconstructive efforts regarding the periods immediately preceding Proto-Germanic as traditionally characterised. The notion of

11562-527: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by

11703-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in

11844-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as

11985-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to

12126-489: The five books of the Spiritist Codification written by French educator Hypolite Léon Denizard Rivail under the pseudonym Allan Kardec reporting séances in which he observed a series of phenomena that he attributed to incorporeal intelligence (spirits). His assumption of spirit communication was validated by many contemporaries, among them many scientists and philosophers who attended séances and studied

12267-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies

12408-401: The house was supposedly haunted, Athenodorus intentionally set up his writing desk in the room where the apparition was said to appear and sat there writing until late at night when he was disturbed by a ghost bound in chains. He followed the ghost outside where it indicated a spot on the ground. When Athenodorus later excavated the area, a shackled skeleton was unearthed. The haunting ceased when

12549-538: The human spirit or soul, both of the living and the deceased, the Old English word is used as a synonym of Latin spiritus also in the meaning of "breath" or "blast" from the earliest attestations (9th century). It could also denote any good or evil spirit, such as angels and demons; the Anglo-Saxon gospel refers to the demonic possession of Matthew 12:43 as se unclæna gast . Also from the Old English period,

12690-437: The incipient predecessor to Early Proto-Germanic, hence the terms Pre-Germanic Indo-European (Voyles) or Pre-Proto-Germanic (Van Coetsem) for this stage. The lower boundary (latest date) of the Germanic parent language has been tentatively identified as that point in the development of the language which preceded permanent fragmentation and which produced the Germanic daughter languages. In his work entitled The Vocalism of

12831-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore

12972-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just

13113-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring

13254-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as

13395-593: The largest proportion and greatest number of followers. The physician John Ferriar wrote "An Essay Towards a Theory of Apparitions" in 1813 in which he argued that sightings of ghosts were the result of optical illusions . Later the French physician Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont published On Hallucinations: Or, the Rational History of Apparitions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism in 1845 in which he claimed sightings of ghosts were

13536-537: The living to ask for prayers to end their suffering. Other dead souls returned to urge the living to confess their sins before their own deaths. Medieval European ghosts were more substantial than ghosts described in the Victorian age , and there are accounts of ghosts being wrestled with and physically restrained until a priest could arrive to hear its confession. Some were less solid, and could move through walls. Often they were described as paler and sadder versions of

13677-662: The local priest requested to speak to the boy directly, leading to an extended disquisition on theology. The boy narrated the trauma of death and the unhappiness of his fellow souls in Purgatory, and reported that God was most pleased with the ongoing Crusade against the Cathar heretics, launched three years earlier. The time of the Albigensian Crusade in southern France was marked by intense and prolonged warfare, this constant bloodshed and dislocation of populations being

13818-567: The medieval period an apparition of a ghost is recorded from 1211, at the time of the Albigensian Crusade . Gervase of Tilbury , Marshal of Arles , wrote that the image of Guilhem, a boy recently murdered in the forest, appeared in his cousin's home in Beaucaire , near Avignon . This series of "visits" lasted all of the summer. Through his cousin, who spoke for him, the boy allegedly held conversations with anyone who wished, until

13959-411: The memory and personality of the dead person. They traveled to the netherworld, where they were assigned a position, and led an existence similar in some ways to that of the living. Relatives of the dead were expected to make offerings of food and drink to the dead to ease their conditions. If they did not, the ghosts could inflict misfortune and illness on the living. Traditional healing practices ascribed

14100-651: The metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma , which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible , God is depicted as synthesising Adam , as a living soul, from the dust of the Earth and the breath of God. In many traditional accounts, ghosts were often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance ( vengeful ghosts ), or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of

14241-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes

14382-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds

14523-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across

14664-435: The next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore ,

14805-469: The other hand used figuratively of any shadowy outline, or fuzzy or unsubstantial image; in optics, photography , and cinematography especially, a flare, secondary image, or spurious signal. The synonym spook is a Dutch loanword, akin to Low German spôk (of uncertain etymology); it entered the English language via American English in the 19th century. Alternative words in modern usage include spectre (altn. specter ; from Latin spectrum ),

14946-547: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By

15087-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in

15228-559: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process

15369-421: The person they had been while alive, and dressed in tattered gray rags. The vast majority of reported sightings were male. There were some reported cases of ghostly armies, fighting battles at night in the forest, or in the remains of an Iron Age hillfort, as at Wandlebury , near Cambridge, England. Living knights were sometimes challenged to single combat by phantom knights, which vanished when defeated. From

15510-413: The phenomena. His work was later extended by writers like Leon Denis , Arthur Conan Doyle , Camille Flammarion , Ernesto Bozzano , Chico Xavier , Divaldo Pereira Franco, Waldo Vieira, Johannes Greber , and others. Spiritism has adherents in many countries throughout the world, including Spain, United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, England, Argentina, Portugal, and especially Brazil, which has

15651-469: The popular classical expectation of how a ghost should look. In the 5th century AD, the Christian priest Constantius of Lyon recorded an instance of the recurring theme of the improperly buried dead who come back to haunt the living, and who can only cease their haunting when their bones have been discovered and properly reburied. Ghosts reported in medieval Europe tended to fall into two categories:

15792-553: The property where their memories and energy are strong. There are many references to ghosts in Mesopotamian religions – the religions of Sumer , Babylon , Assyria , and other early states in Mesopotamia . Traces of these beliefs survive in the later Abrahamic religions that came to dominate the region. The concept of ghosts may predate many belief systems . Ghosts were thought to be created at time of death, taking on

15933-451: The result of hallucinations . David Turner, a retired physical chemist, suggested that ball lightning could cause inanimate objects to move erratically. Folklore Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to

16074-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual

16215-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide

16356-402: The same time next year." The 5th-century BC play Oresteia includes an appearance of the ghost of Clytemnestra , one of the first ghosts to appear in a work of fiction. The ancient Romans believed a ghost could be used to exact revenge on an enemy by scratching a curse on a piece of lead or pottery and placing it into a grave. Plutarch , in the 1st century AD, described the haunting of

16497-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context

16638-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to

16779-621: The skeleton was given a proper reburial. The writers Plautus and Lucian also wrote stories about haunted houses. In the New Testament , according to Luke 24:37–39, following his resurrection , Jesus was forced to persuade the Disciples that he was not a ghost (some versions of the Bible, such as the KJV and NKJV, use the term "spirit"). Similarly, Jesus' followers at first believed he

16920-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take

17061-482: The souls of the dead, or demons. The souls of the dead returned for a specific purpose. Demonic ghosts existed only to torment or tempt the living. The living could tell them apart by demanding their purpose in the name of Jesus Christ. The soul of a dead person would divulge its mission, while a demonic ghost would be banished at the sound of the Holy Name. Most ghosts were souls assigned to Purgatory , condemned for

17202-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore

17343-409: The spirit of a deceased person that persists in the material world (a ghost) is regarded as an unnatural or undesirable state of affairs and the idea of ghosts or revenants is associated with a reaction of fear. This is universally the case in pre-modern folk cultures, but fear of ghosts also remains an integral aspect of the modern ghost story , Gothic horror , and other horror fiction dealing with

17484-507: The spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary, human-like essences, though stories of ghostly armies and the ghosts of animals other than humans have also been recounted. They are believed to haunt particular locations , objects, or people they were associated with in life. According to a 2009 study by the Pew Research Center, 18% of Americans say they have seen a ghost. The overwhelming consensus of science

17625-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this

17766-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For

17907-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during

18048-411: The supernatural. Another widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered

18189-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with

18330-423: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as

18471-464: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

18612-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into

18753-688: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following

18894-492: The word could denote the spirit of God, viz. the " Holy Ghost ". The now-prevailing sense of "the soul of a deceased person, spoken of as appearing in a visible form" only emerges in Middle English (14th century). The modern noun does, however, retain a wider field of application, extending on one hand to "soul", "spirit", " vital principle ", " mind ", or " psyche ", the seat of feeling, thought, and moral judgement; on

19035-469: The word in the naming of the creatures known as the Ringwraiths has influenced later usage in fantasy literature. Bogey or bogy/bogie is a term for a ghost, and appears in Scottish poet John Mayne 's Hallowe'en in 1780. A revenant is a deceased person returning from the dead to haunt the living, either as a disembodied ghost or alternatively as an animated (" undead ") corpse. Also related

19176-546: The works of both Van Coetsem and Voyles, attempts are made to reconstruct aspects of this stage of the language using a process the former refers to as inverted reconstruction ; i.e. one using the data made available through the attested daughter languages in light of and at times in preference to the results of the comparative reconstruction undertaken to arrive at Proto-Indo-European . The results are not strictly standard in terms of traditional Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, but they are instead presented as characteristic of

19317-524: The world of the living. Periodically they were called upon to provide advice or prophecy, but they do not appear to be particularly feared. Ghosts in the classical world often appeared in the form of vapor or smoke, but at other times they were described as being substantial, appearing as they had been at the time of death, complete with the wounds that killed them. By the 5th century BC, classical Greek ghosts had become haunting, frightening creatures who could work to either good or evil purposes. The spirit of

19458-602: The world, the hero arranges for the burial of a dead man. Soon after, he gains a companion who aids him and, in the end, the hero's companion reveals that he is in fact the dead man . Instances of this include the Italian fairy tale " Fair Brow " and the Swedish " The Bird 'Grip' ". Spiritualism is a monotheistic belief system or religion , postulating a belief in God , but with a distinguishing feature of belief that spirits of

19599-687: Was a ghost (spirit) when they saw him walking on water . One of the first persons to express disbelief in ghosts was Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century AD. In his satirical novel The Lover of Lies (c. 150 AD), he relates how Democritus "the learned man from Abdera in Thrace " lived in a tomb outside the city gates to prove that cemeteries were not haunted by the spirits of the departed. Lucian relates how he persisted in his disbelief despite practical jokes perpetrated by "some young men of Abdera" who dressed up in black robes with skull masks to frighten him. This account by Lucian notes something about

19740-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of

19881-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published

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