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141-451: Prior to the establishment ( c.  2000 ) of the parallel Ethnomusicology Institute and the renaming of the paired units as The Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, the name "Folklore Institute" served as the overarching designation for what was already a full-fledged academic department. This unit had roots going back to the 1940s and was fully established in 1962. After the name change to Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology,

282-419: A "quantitative mining of the resulting archive, and extraction of distribution patterns in time and space". It is based on the assumption that every text artifact is a variant of the original text. As a proponent of this method, Walter Anderson proposed additionally a Law of Self-Correction, i.e. a feedback mechanism which would keep the variants closer to the original form. It was during the first decades of

423-458: A Linear World", Donald Fixico describes an alternate concept of time. "Indian thinking" involves "'seeing' things from a perspective emphasizing that circles and cycles are central to world and that all things are related within the Universe." He then suggests that "the concept of time for Indian people has been such a continuum that time becomes less relevant and the rotation of life or seasons of

564-494: A combination of sound and body movements. The African musical focus on rhythmic singing and dancing was brought to the New World, where it became part of a distinct folk culture that helped Africans "retain continuity with their past through music." Along with retaining many African elements, there was also a continuation of instruments. Enslaved Africans would either take with them African instruments or reconstructed them once in

705-695: A context which is foreign to the original tradition." This definition, offered by the folklorist Hermann Bausinger, does not discount the validity of meaning expressed in these "second hand" traditions. Many Walt Disney films and products belong in this category of folklorism; fairy tales become animated film characters, stuffed animals and bed linens. These manifestations of folklore traditions have their own significance for their audience. Fakelore refers to artifacts which might be termed pseudo-folklore , manufactured items claiming to be traditional. The folklorist Richard Dorson coined this word, clarifying it in his book "Folklore and Fakelore". Current thinking within

846-461: A culture, not just the oral traditions. Folk process is used to describe the refinement and creative change of artifacts by community members within the folk tradition that defines the folk process. Professionals within this field, regardless of the other words they use, consider themselves to be folklorists. Other terms which might be confused with folklore are popular culture and vernacular culture . However, pop culture tends to be in demand for

987-503: A different direction. Throughout the 19th century folklore had been tied to romantic ideals of the soul of the people, in which folk tales and folksongs recounted the lives and exploits of ethnic folk heroes. Folklore chronicled the mythical origins of different peoples across Europe and established the beginnings of national pride . By the first decade of the 20th century there were scholarly societies as well as individual folklore positions within universities, academies, and museums. However,

1128-552: A difficult and painful discussion within the German folklore community. Following World War II, the discussion continued about whether to align folklore studies with literature or ethnology. Within this discussion, many voices were actively trying to identify the optimal approach to take in the analysis of folklore artifacts. One major change had already been initiated by Franz Boas. Culture was no longer viewed in evolutionary terms; each culture has its own integrity and completeness, and

1269-427: A dwelling, or items of traditional food can be viewed as icons of cultural meaning. Native American cultures are numerous and diverse. Though some neighboring cultures hold similar beliefs, others can be quite different from one another. The most common myths are the creation myths , which tell a story to explain how the earth was formed and where humans and other beings came from. Others may include explanations about

1410-454: A feature of camp meetings held among devout Christians across the South. Most slaves were typically animists or were a part of some other form of African Religion. To destroy any remnants of African culture or make more people disciples, slaves would be encouraged and taken to church. They became attracted to the grace and freedom that was preached within the church, which was very different from

1551-482: A field across both Europe and North America, coordinating with Volkskunde ( German ), folkeminner ( Norwegian ), and folkminnen ( Swedish ), among others. A 1982 UNESCO document titled "Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore" declared a global need to establish provisions protecting folklore from varying dangers identified in the document. UNESCO further published

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1692-410: A flooded earth being restored. There are many "hero stories" immortalising the adventures of heroes with supernatural powers, who right wrongs and defeat evils. Animal tales are common, some explaining how features of certain animals occurred, some using animal characters for narration, and others using animals symbolically. There are also myths where supernatural beings appear in the form of animals, with

1833-674: A hard task, like carrying a heavy load, singing would provide a rhythm that allowed them to coordinate their movements. When picking crops, music was not necessary, but when there was silence it would be uncomfortable for the overseers. Even though there was a presence of melancholy in songs, Southern slave owners would interpret that their slaves were happy and content, possibly because of their singing. Even if slave owners attempted to forbid things like drums or remnants of African culture, they did not seem to mind them learning European instruments and music. In some cases, black string players would be invited to play to entertain white audiences. Between

1974-437: A life cycle of linear time (ex. baptisms, weddings, funerals). This needs to be expanded to other traditions of oral lore. For folk narrative is NOT a linear chain of isolated tellings, going from one single performance on our time-space grid to the next single performance. Instead it fits better into a non-linear system, where one performer varies the story from one telling to the next, and the performer's understudy starts to tell

2115-786: A limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music. Slavery was introduced to the Thirteen Colonies beginning in the early 17th century in Virginia . The ancestors of today's African-American population were brought from hundreds of tribes across West Africa and brought with them certain traits of West African music. This included call and response vocals, complex rhythmic music, syncopated beats, shifting accents, incorporation of hums and moans, which are sounds with no distinct meaning, and

2256-426: A limited time, mass-produced and communicated using mass media. Individually, these tend to be labeled fads , and disappear as quickly as they appear. The term vernacular culture differs from folklore in its overriding emphasis on a specific locality or region. For example, vernacular architecture denotes the standard building form of a region, using the materials available and designed to address functional needs of

2397-469: A major reason for the country's economic and political weakness, and he promised to restore a German realm based on a cleansed, and hence strong, German people. Racial or ethnic purity" was the goal of the Nazis, intent on forging a Greater Germanic Reich . In the postwar years, departments of folklore were established in multiple German universities. However an analysis of just how folklore studies supported

2538-521: A modern academic discipline, folklore studies straddles the space between the social sciences and the humanities . The study of folklore originated in Europe in the first half of the 19th century with a focus on the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm , first published 1812, is the best known collection of the verbal folklore of

2679-503: A negative feedback loop at the next iteration. Both performer and audience are acting within the "Twin Laws" of folklore transmission , in which novelty and innovation is balanced by the conservative forces of the familiar. Even further, the presence of a folklore observer at a performance of any kind will influence the performance itself in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Because folklore is firstly an act of communication between parties, it

2820-535: A new action. The field has expanded from a focus on mechanistic and biological systems to an expanded recognition that these theoretical constructs can also be applied to many cultural and societal systems, including folklore. Once divorced from a model of tradition that works solely on a linear time scale (i.e. moving from one folklore performance to the next), we begin to ask different questions about how these folklore artifacts maintain themselves over generations and centuries. The oral tradition of jokes as an example

2961-619: A pirate turned gentleman, turned the settlers into foragers and successful traders with the Native Americans, who taught the English how to plant corn and other crops. Smith led expeditions to explore the regions surrounding Jamestown, and it was during one of these that the chief of the Powhatan Native Americans captured Smith. According to an account Smith published in 1624, he was going to be put to death until

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3102-661: A rock at Plymouth. The first written reference to the Pilgrims landing on a rock is found 121 years after they landed. The Rock, or one traditionally identified as it, has long been memorialized on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The holiday of Thanksgiving is said to have begun with the Pilgrims in 1621. They had come to America to escape religious persecution, but then nearly starved to death. Some friendly Native Americans, including Squanto , helped

3243-462: A sailing ship. Such tasks, which usually required a coordinated group effort in either a pulling or pushing action, included weighing anchor and setting sail. "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popular Irish and American folk song. Historically, it was often sung as a sea chanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on a railroad. There are numerous titles of the song including, "Pat Works on

3384-683: A silver dollar across the Rappahannock River at Ferry Farm . Another tale claims that as a young child, Washington chopped down his father's cherry tree. His angry father confronted the young Washington, who proclaimed "I cannot tell a lie" and admitted to the transgression, thus illuminating his honesty. Parson Mason Locke Weems mentions the first citation of this legend in his 1806 book, The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honorable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen . This anecdote cannot be independently verified. Samuel Clemens , also known as Mark Twain,

3525-447: A social group and to collect their lore, preferably in situ. Once collected, these data need to be documented and preserved to enable further access and study. The documented lore is then available to be analyzed and interpreted by folklorists and other cultural historians, and can become the basis for studies of either individual customs or comparative studies. There are multiple venues, be they museums, journals or folk festivals to present

3666-460: A study of homoerotic subtext in American football and anal-erotic elements in German folklore, were not always appreciated and involved Dundes in several major folklore studies controversies during his career. True to each of these approaches, and any others one might want to employ (political, women's issues, material culture, urban contexts, non-verbal text, ad infinitum), whichever perspective

3807-467: A symbol of women's contributions to American history. Other Revolutionary War heroes who became figures of American folklore include: Benedict Arnold , Benjamin Franklin , Nathan Hale , John Hancock , John Paul Jones and Francis Marion . The tall tale is a fundamental element of American folk literature. The tall tale's origins are seen in the bragging contests that often occurred when men of

3948-678: A systematic and pioneering way since the late 19th century. In the work of compiling the popular traditions of the Chilean people and of the original peoples, they stood out, not only in the study of national folklore, but also in Latin America. Ramón Laval, Julio Vicuña, Rodolfo Lenz, José Toribio Medina, Tomás Guevara, Félix de Augusta, and Aukanaw, among others, generated an important documentary and critical corpus around oral literature , autochthonous languages, regional dialects, and peasant and indigenous customs. They published, mainly during

4089-466: A trove of cultures rubbing elbows with each other, mixing and matching into exciting combinations as new generations come up. It is in the study of their folklife that we begin to understand the cultural patterns underlying the different ethnic groups. Language and customs provide a window into their view of reality. "The study of varying worldviews among ethnic and national groups in America remains one of

4230-532: A voice for their longing for freedom and to experience it. Around the 1840s, slaves knew that in the northern states, slavery was illegal, and some northerners wanted the complete abolishment of slavery. So when they sang about heaven, it was also about possibly escaping north. In the early 19th century the Underground Railroad was developed, containing a network of secret routes and safe houses, and it greatly impacted slaves' religious music. When there

4371-406: 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." This law in conjunction with other legislation

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4512-399: A wide-variety of sometimes synonymous terms. Folklore was the original term used in this discipline. Its synonym, folklife , came into circulation in the second half of the 20th century, at a time when some researchers felt that the term folklore was too closely tied exclusively to oral lore. The new term folklife , along with its synonym folk culture , is meant to include all aspects of

4653-596: Is a short story by the American author Washington Irving , first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains . He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution . Inspired by a conversation on nostalgia with his American expatriate brother-in-law, Irving wrote

4794-594: Is a social group which includes two or more persons 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 expands the material considered to be folklore artifacts to include "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". The folklorist studies

4935-476: Is also known to have spread the story while lecturing, personalizing it by adding "I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't." Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was an attorney, planter and politician who became known as an orator during the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. Patrick Henry is best known for the speech he made in

5076-465: Is best known for his collection of epic Finnish poems published under the title Kalevala . John Fanning Watson in the United States published the "Annals of Philadelphia". With increasing industrialization, urbanization, and the rise in literacy throughout Europe in the 19th century, folklorists were concerned that the oral knowledge and beliefs, the lore of the rural folk would be lost. It

5217-527: Is chosen will spotlight some features and leave other characteristics in the shadows. With the passage in 1976 of the American Folklife Preservation Act, folklore studies in the United States came of age. This legislation follows in the footsteps of other legislation designed to safeguard more tangible aspects of our national heritage worthy of protection. This law also marks a shift in our national awareness; it gives voice to

5358-486: Is distinguished primarily by age; many myths exaggerate the exploits of their heroes, but in tall tales, the exaggeration looms large, to the extent of becoming the whole of the story. Other historical figures include Titanic survivor Molly Brown , Gunslinging Outlaw Billy The Kid , Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody , and sharpshooter Annie Oakley . Other folkloric creatures include the Chupacabra , Jackalope ,

5499-420: Is found across all cultures, and is documented as early as 1600 B.C. Whereas the subject matter varies widely to reflect its cultural context, the form of the joke remains remarkably consistent. According to the theories of cybernetics and its secondary field of autopoiesis , this can be attributed to a closed loop auto-correction built into the system maintenance of oral folklore. Auto-correction in oral folklore

5640-451: Is incomplete without inclusion of the reception in its analysis. The understanding of folklore performance as communication leads directly into modern linguistic theory and communication studies . Words both reflect and shape our worldview. Oral traditions, particularly in their stability over generations and even centuries, provide significant insight into the ways in which insiders of a culture see, understand, and express their responses to

5781-607: Is just a partial list of the fields of study related to folklore studies, all of which are united by a common interest in subject matter. It is well-documented that the term folklore was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms . He fabricated it for use in an article published in the August 22, 1846 issue of The Athenaeum . Thoms consciously replaced the contemporary terminology of popular antiquities or popular literature with this new word. Folklore

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5922-631: Is the Jewish Christmas Tree , a point of some contention among American Jews. Public sector folklore was introduced into the American Folklore Society in the early 1970s. These public folklorists work in museums and cultural agencies to identify and document the diverse folk cultures and folk artists in their region. Beyond this, they provide performance venues for the artists, with the twin objectives of entertainment and education about different ethnic groups. Given

6063-541: The American frontier gathered. A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, relayed as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events; others are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the American Old West, or the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They are usually humorous or good-natured. The line between myth and tall tale

6204-840: The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. The American Folklife Preservation Act (P.L. 94-201) passed in 1976 by the United States Congress in conjunction with the Bicentennial Celebration included a definition of folklore, also called folklife : "...[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes

6345-616: The Historical-Geographical method , also called the Finnish method. Using multiple variants of a tale, this investigative method attempted to work backwards in time and location to compile the original version from what they considered the incomplete fragments still in existence. This was the search for the "Urform", which by definition was more complete and more "authentic" than the newer, more scattered versions. The historic-geographic method has been succinctly described as

6486-670: The Nain Rouge of Detroit, Michigan , the Hide-behind, Wendigo of Minnesota and Chessie , a legendary sea monster said to live in Chesapeake Bay . Santa Claus , also known as Saint Nicholas , Father Christmas , or simply "Santa", is a figure with legendary, mythical, historical and folkloric origins. The modern figure of Santa Claus was derived from the Dutch figure, Sinterklaas, which may, in turn, have its origins in

6627-667: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife festivals around the country. Folklore interest sparked in Turkey around the second half of the nineteenth century when the need to determine a national language came about. Their writings consisted of vocabulary and grammatical rule from the Arabic and Persian language. Although the Ottoman intellectuals were not affected by the communication gap, in 1839,

6768-723: The Susan Constant , the Discovery , and the Godspeed sailed through Chesapeake Bay and thirty miles up the James River settlers built Jamestown, Virginia , England's first permanent colony. Too late in the season to plant crops, many were not accustomed to manual labor. Within a few months, some settlers died of famine and disease. Only thirty-eight made it through their first year in the New World. Captain John Smith ,

6909-554: The Tanzimat reform introduced a change to Ottoman literature. A new generation of writers with contact to the West, especially France, noticed the importance of literature and its role in the development of institutions. Following the models set by Westerners, the new generation of writers returned to Turkey bringing the ideologies of novels, short stories, plays and journalism with them. These new forms of literature were set to enlighten

7050-1128: The Vietnam War Memorial , and the Grand Canyon . Other cultural icons include Rosie the Riveter , the United States Constitution , the Colt Single Action Army , Smokey Bear , the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress , and apple pie . Historical events that form a part of American folklore include: the Boston Massacre , the Boston Tea Party , Paul Revere's Ride , the Battle of the Alamo , the Salem witch trials ,

7191-725: The number of folk festivals held around the world, it becomes clear that the cultural multiplicity of a region is presented with pride and excitement. Public folklorists are increasingly being involved in economic and community development projects to elucidate and clarify differing world views of the social groups impacted by the projects. Once folklore artifacts have been recorded on the World Wide Web, they can be collected in large electronic databases and even moved into collections of big data . This compels folklorists to find new ways to collect and curate these data. Along with these new challenges, electronic data collections provide

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7332-423: The traditional artifacts of a group and the groups within which these customs, traditions and beliefs are transmitted. Transmission of folk artifacts is necessary to their preservation over time outside of study by cultural archaeologist. Beliefs and customs are passed informally within a folk group mainly anonymously and in multiple variants. This is in contrast to high culture , characterized by recognition by

7473-399: The traditions of a culture , subculture , or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. Native American cultures are rich in myths and legends that explain natural phenomena and the relationship between humans and the spirit world. According to Barre Toelken , feathers, beadwork, dance steps and music, the events in a story, the shape of

7614-477: The 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. Lomax was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and

7755-650: The 20th century that Folklore Studies in Europe and America began to diverge. The Europeans continued with their emphasis on oral traditions of the pre-literate peasant, and remained connected to literary scholarship within the universities. By this definition, folklore was completely based in the European cultural sphere; any social group that did not originate in Europe was to be studied by ethnologists and cultural anthropologists . In this light, some twenty-first century scholars have interpreted European folkloristics as an instrument of internal colonialism , in parallel with

7896-403: The 20th-century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century but is often applied to music that is older than that. The earliest American scholars were with The American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies. In North America, during

8037-483: The American South. During the first half of the 19th century, some of the songs African Americans sang also began to appear in use for shipboard tasks, i.e. as shanties. Shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs, which were adapted to suit musical forms matching the various labor tasks required to operate

8178-499: The European peasantry. This interest in stories, sayings and songs, i.e. verbal lore , continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folklore studies with literature and mythology . By the turn into the 20th century, European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogeneous peasant populations in their regions, while the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

8319-551: The Folklore Institute has trained very large number of professional folklorists. A small sample of its prominent alumni includes: Alan Dundes , Michael Owen Jones , Dorthy Noyes , Bill Ivy , Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett , Sabina Magliocco , Regina Bendix , Ronald L. Baker , Simon J. Bronner , Jan Harold Brunvand , Dan Ben-Amos , and Edward D. Ives . Like the Ethnomusicology Institute,

8460-494: The Folklore Institute is led by a Director. One of these two Directors typically also serves as Chair of the department as a whole. Among the long-term projects of the Folklore Institute are Traditional Arts Indiana (a statewide public folklore agency) and the Journal of Folklore Research . The Folklore Institute has long organized focused conferences in folklore studies and neighboring fields. Some of these were later published by

8601-829: The House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. With the House undecided on whether to mobilize for military action against the encroaching British military force, Henry argued in favor of mobilization. Forty-two years later, Henry's first biographer, William Wirt, working from oral histories, tried to reconstruct what Henry said. According to Wirt, Henry ended his speech with words that have since become immortalized: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" The crowd, by Wirt's account, jumped up and shouted "To Arms! To Arms!". For 160 years Wirt's account

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8742-687: The Mountain ", " Skewball ", " Big Bad John ", " Stagger Lee ", " Camptown Races " and " The Battle Hymn of the Republic ". Work songs sung by sailors between the 18th and 20th centuries are known as sea shanties. The shanty was a distinct type of work song, developed especially in American-style merchant vessels that had come to prominence in decades prior to the American Civil War. These songs were typically performed while adjusting

8883-532: The Nazi Party. Their expressed goal was to re-establish what they perceived as the former purity of the Germanic peoples of Europe. The German anti-Nazi philosopher Ernst Bloch was one of the main analysts and critics of this ideology. "Nazi ideology presented racial purity as the means to heal the wounds of the suffering German state following World War I. Hitler painted the ethnic heterogeneity of Germany as

9024-482: The New World. The first slaves in the United States sang work songs and field hollers. However, slave music was used for a variety of reasons. Music was included in religious ceremonies and celebrations, used to coordinate work, and to conceal hidden messages, like when they were commenting on slave owners. African American slave songs can be divided into three groups: religious, work, and recreational songs. Protestant hymns written mostly by New England preachers became

9165-421: The Pilgrims survive through the first winter. The perseverance of the Pilgrims is celebrated during the annual Thanksgiving festival. George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799), the country's first president, is the most preeminent of American historical and folkloric figures, as he holds the place of " Pater Patriae ". Apocryphal stories about Washington's childhood include a claim that he skipped

9306-511: The Railway" and "Paddy on the Railway". "Paddy Works on the Erie" is another version of the song. "Paddy on the Railway" is attested as a chanty in the earliest known published work to use the word "chanty", G. E. Clark's Seven Years of a Sailor's Life (1867). Clark recounted experiences fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, in a vessel out of Provincetown, Mass. c. 1865–66. At one point,

9447-591: The Shaker worship services. In Shaker society, a spiritual "gift" could also be a musical revelation, and they considered it important to record musical inspirations as they occurred. " Simple Gifts " was composed by Elder Joseph Brackett and originated in the Alfred Shaker community in Maine in 1848. Aaron Copland 's iconic 1944 ballet score Appalachian Spring , uses the now famous Shaker tune "Simple Gifts" as

9588-678: The Sun, Moon, constellations, specific animals, seasons, and weather. This is one of the ways that many tribes have kept, and continue to keep, their cultures alive; these stories are told as a way of preserving and transmitting the nation, tribe, or band's particular beliefs, history, customs, spirituality, and traditional way of life. According to Barre Toelken, "Stories not only entertain but also embody Native behavioral and ethical values." Although individual tribes have their own sacred beliefs and myths, many stories have much in common. Myths about floods are almost universal amongst Plains tribes, stories of

9729-488: The United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributes to a melting pot. Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during

9870-426: The United States was left without history—or heroes on which to base a shared sense of their social selves. Washington Irving was instrumental in popularizing Columbus. His version of Columbus' life, published in 1829, was more a romance than a biography. The book was very popular, and contributed to an image of the discoverer as a solitary individual who challenged the unknown sea, as triumphant Americans contemplated

10011-538: The advent of the digital age , the question once again foregrounds itself concerning the relevance of folklore in this new century. Although the profession in folklore grows and the articles and books on folklore topics proliferate, the traditional role of the folklorist is indeed changing. The United States is known as a land of immigrants; with the exception of the first Indian nations , everyone originally came from somewhere else. Americans are proud of their cultural diversity . For folklorists, this country represents

10152-455: The amateur at the turn of the 20th century was to collect and classify cultural artifacts from the pre-industrial rural areas, parallel to the drive in the life sciences to do the same for the natural world. "Folk was a clear label to set materials apart from modern life…material specimens, which were meant to be classified in the natural history of civilization. Tales, originally dynamic and fluid, were given stability and concreteness by means of

10293-601: The auspices of the Federal Writers Project during these years continues to offer a goldmine of primary source materials for folklorists and other cultural historians. As chairman of the Federal Writers' Project between 1938 and 1942, Benjamin A. Botkin supervised the work of these folklore field workers. Both Botkin and John Lomax were particularly influential during this time in expanding folklore collection techniques to include more detailing of

10434-557: The basis of its finale. Folk dances of British origin include the square dance, descended from the quadrille, combined with the American innovation of a caller instructing the dancers. The religious communal society known as the Shakers emigrated from England during the 18th century and developed their own folk dance style. Other locations and landmarks that have become part of American folklore include: Independence Hall , Monument Valley , Ellis Island , Hoover Dam , Pearl Harbor ,

10575-493: The bear, elk, eagle, owl, and snake frequently referred to. The founding of the United States is often surrounded by national myths , legends, and tall tales. Many stories have developed since the founding long ago to become a part of America's folklore and cultural awareness, and non-Native American folklore especially includes any narrative which has contributed to the shaping of American culture and belief systems. These narratives have varying levels of historical accuracy ;

10716-740: The beliefs and customs of diverse cultural groups in their region. These positions are often affiliated with museums, libraries, arts organizations, public schools, historical societies, etc. The most renowned of these is the American Folklife Center at the Smithsonian, which hosts the Smithsonian Folklife Festival every summer in Washington, DC. Public folklore differentiates itself from the academic folklore supported by universities, in which collection, research and analysis are primary goals. The field of folklore studies uses

10857-491: The chief's daughter, Pocahontas , saved him. From this, the legend of Pocahontas sprang forth, becoming part of American folklore, children's books, and movies. Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, and an important symbol in American history. There are no contemporary references to the Pilgrims' landing on

10998-505: The constant rhythms of the natural world. Within the last decades our time scale has expanded from unimaginably small ( nanoseconds ) to unimaginably large ( deep time ). In comparison, our working concept of time as {past : present : future} looks almost quaint. How do we map "tradition" into this multiplicity of time scales? Folklore studies has already acknowledged this in the study of traditions which are either done in an annual cycle of circular time (ex. Christmas, May Day), or in

11139-495: The crew is getting up the anchor in a storm, by means of a pump-style windlass. One of the chanties the men sing while performing this task is mentioned by title, "Paddy on the Railway." The Shakers are a religious sect founded in 18th-century England upon the teachings of Ann Lee . Shakers today are most known for their cultural contributions, especially style of music and furniture. The Shakers composed thousands of songs, and also created many dances; both were an important part of

11280-491: The customs and beliefs of the group. Or it can be performance for an outside group, in which the first goal is to set the performers apart from the audience. This analysis then goes beyond the artifact itself, be it dance, music or story-telling. It goes beyond the performers and their message. As part of performance studies, the audience becomes part of the performance. If any folklore performance strays too far from audience expectations, it will likely be brought back by means of

11421-511: The dangers and promise of their own wilderness frontier . As a consequence of his vision and audacity, there was now a land free from kings, a vast continent for new beginnings. In the years following the Revolution the poetic device " Columbia " was used as a symbol of both Columbus and America. King's College of New York changed its name in 1792 to Columbia, and the new capital in Washington was subtitled District of Columbia . In May 1607,

11562-402: The designation Folklore Institute referred to the department's folklore faculty, the folklore graduate students that they supervised, and the folklore studies-specific teaching, research, and outreach projects that the department's folklorists pursued. Many generations of professional folklorists (and some ethnomusicologists ) earned their degrees (B.A., M.A., and/or Ph.D.) from the unit when it

11703-667: The digital age, the binary thinking of the 20th century structuralists remains an important tool in the folklorist's toolbox. This does not mean that binary thinking was invented in recent times along with computers; only that we became aware of both the power and the limitations of the "either/or" construction. In folklore studies, the multiple binaries underlying much of the theoretical thinking have been identified – {dynamicism : conservatism}, {anecdote : myth}, {process : structure}, {performance : tradition}, {improvisation : repetition}, {variation : traditionalism}, {repetition : innovation}; not to overlook

11844-414: The discipline is that this term places undue emphasis on the origination of the artifact as a sign of authenticity of the tradition. Adjacently, the adjective folkloric is used to designate materials having the character of folklore or tradition, at the same time making no claim to authenticity. There are several goals of active folklore research. The first objective is to identify tradition bearers within

11985-431: The elites of a given society and identified as specific works created by individuals. The folklorist study the significance of these beliefs, customs and objects for the group. In folklore studies "folklore means something – to the tale teller, to the song singer, to the fiddler, and to the audience or addressees". The field assumes cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within

12126-428: The emerging middle class. For literate, urban intellectuals and students of folklore the folk was someone else and the past was recognized as being something truly different. Folklore became a measure of the progress of society , how far we had moved forward into the industrial present and indeed removed ourselves from a past marked by poverty, illiteracy and superstition. The task of both the professional folklorist and

12267-415: The event of doing something within a given context, for a specific audience, using artifacts as necessary props in the communication of traditions between individuals and within groups. Beginning in the 1970s, these new areas of folklore studies became articulated in performance studies , where traditional behaviors are evaluated and understood within the context of their performance. It is the meaning within

12408-487: The famous reply " Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus ", has become a part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States and Canada. The Headless Horseman is a fictional character from the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American author Washington Irving. The story, from Irving's collection of short stories, entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, has worked itself into known American folklore/legend through literature and film. " Rip Van Winkle "

12549-469: The field of folklore studies even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field. Public folklore is a relatively new offshoot of folklore studies, starting after the Second World War and modeled on the work of Alan Lomax and Ben Botkin in the 1930s. Lomax and Botkin emphasized applied folklore , with modern public sector folklorists working to document, preserve and present

12690-436: The first American flag for General George Washington entered into American consciousness about the time of the 1876 centennial celebrations. In the 2008 book The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon , Smithsonian experts point out that accounts of the event appealed to Americans eager for stories about the revolution and its heroes and heroines. Betsy Ross was promoted as a patriotic role model for young girls and

12831-532: The first decades of the 20th century, linguistic and philological studies, dictionaries, comparative studies between the national folklores of Ibero-America, compilations of stories, poetry, and religious traditions. In 1909, at the initiative of Laval, Vicuña and Lenz, the Chilean Folklore Society was founded, the first of its kind in America. Two years later, it would merge with the recently created Chilean Society of History and Geography. With

12972-498: The fore following World War II; as spokesman, William Bascom formulated the 4 functions of folklore . This approach takes a more top-down approach to understand how a specific form fits into and expresses meaning within the culture as a whole. A third method of folklore analysis, popular in the late 20th century, is the Psychoanalytic Interpretation, championed by Alan Dundes . His monographs, including

13113-461: The group, though their meaning can shift and morph with time. Folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group. Folklore does not need to be old; it continues through the modern day. It is created, transmitted, and used to establish "us" and "them" within a given group. The unique nature of a culture's folklore requires the development of methods of study by the culture at hand for effective identification and research. As

13254-541: The hagiographical tales concerning the Christian Saint Nicholas. " A Visit from St. Nicholas ", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore. The poem, which has been called "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American", is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today, including his physical appearance,

13395-457: The imperialistic dimensions of early 20th century cultural anthropology and Orientalism . Unlike contemporary anthropology, however, many early European folklorists were themselves members of the prioritized groups that folkloristics was intended to study; for instance, Andrew Lang and James George Frazer were both themselves Scotsmen and studied rural folktales from towns near where they grew up. In contrast to this, American folklorists, under

13536-525: The influence of the German-American Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , sought to incorporate other cultural groups living in their region into the study of folklore. This included not only customs brought over by northern European immigrants, but also African Americans, Acadians of eastern Canada, Cajuns of Louisiana, Hispanics of the American southwest, and Native Americans . Not only were these distinct cultural groups all living in

13677-490: The institute or in partnership with other publishers. Folklorists Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore . This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. It became established as

13818-534: The interview context. This was a significant move away from viewing the collected artifacts as isolated fragments, broken remnants of an incomplete pre-historic whole. Using these new interviewing techniques, the collected lore became embedded in and imbued with meaning within the framework of its contemporary practice. The emphasis moved from the lore to the folk, i.e. the groups and the people who gave this lore meaning within contemporary daily living. In Europe during these same decades, folklore studies were drifting in

13959-414: The lives they were living. Slaves would learn the same hymns that their masters sang, and when they came together they developed and sang adapted versions of these hymns, they were called Negro spirituals . It was from these roots, of spiritual songs, work songs, and field hollers, that blues, jazz, and gospel developed. Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. These songs provided them

14100-417: The local economy. Folk architecture is a subset of this, in which the construction is not done by a professional architect or builder, but by an individual putting up a needed structure in the local style. Therefore, all folklore is vernacular culture, but not all vernacular culture necessarily folklore. In addition to these terms, folklorism refers to "material or stylistic elements of folklore [presented] in

14241-522: The masses. He later produced a collection of four thousand proverbs. Many other poets and writers throughout the Turkish nation began to join in on the movement including Ahmet Midhat Efendi who composed short stories based on the proverbs written by Sinasi. These short stories, like many folk stories today, were intended to teach moral lessons to its readers. The study of folklore in Chile was developed in

14382-499: The most extensive literary use of American folklore of its time. 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 a first classification system for folktales in 1910. It was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains

14523-492: The most important unfinished tasks for folklorists and anthropologists." Contrary to a widespread concern, we are not seeing a loss of diversity and increasing cultural homogenization across the land. In fact, critics of this theory point out that as different cultures mix, the cultural landscape becomes multifaceted with the intermingling of customs. People become aware of other cultures and pick and choose different items to adopt from each other. One noteworthy example of this

14664-417: The national understanding that diversity within the country is a unifying feature, not something that separates us. "We no longer view cultural difference as 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

14805-482: The need to collect these vestiges of rural traditions became more compelling, the need to formalize this new field of cultural studies became apparent. The British Folklore Society was established in 1878 and the American Folklore Society was established a decade later. These were just two of a plethora of academic societies founded in the latter half of the 19th century by educated members of

14946-567: The night of his visit, his mode of transportation, the number and names of his reindeer, as well as the tradition that he brings toys to children. The poem has influenced ideas about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus from the United States to the rest of the English-speaking world and beyond. Is There a Santa Claus? was the title of an editorial appearing in the September 21, 1897, edition of The (New York) Sun. The editorial, which included

15087-538: The opportunity to ask different questions, and combine with other academic fields to explore new aspects of traditional culture. Computational humor is just one new field that has taken up the traditional oral forms of jokes and anecdotes for study, holding its first dedicated conference in 1996. This takes us beyond gathering and categorizing large joke collections. Scholars are using computers firstly to recognize jokes in context, and further to attempt to create jokes using artificial intelligence . As we move forward in

15228-466: The original binary of the first folklorists: {traditional : modern} or {old : new}. Bauman re-iterates this thought pattern in claiming that at the core of all folklore is the dynamic tension between tradition and variation (or creativity). Noyes uses similar vocabulary to define [folk] group as "the ongoing play and tension between, on the one hand, the fluid networks of relationship we constantly both produce and negotiate in everyday life and, on

15369-569: The other, the imagined communities we also create and enact but that serve as forces of stabilizing allegiance." This thinking only becomes problematic in light of the theoretical work done on binary opposition , which exposes the values intrinsic to any binary pair. Typically, one of the two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. The categorization of binary oppositions is "often value-laden and ethnocentric", imbuing them with illusory order and superficial meaning. Another baseline of western thought has also been thrown into disarray in

15510-493: The people of Turkey, influencing political and social change within the country. However, the lack of understanding for the language of their writings limited their success in enacting change. Using the language of the "common people" to create literature, influenced the Tanzimat writers to gain interest in folklore and folk literature. In 1859, writer Sinasi , wrote a play in simple enough language that it could be understood by

15651-712: The policies of the Third Reich did not begin until 20 years after World War II in West Germany. Particularly in the works of Hermann Bausinger and Wolfgang Emmerich in the 1960s, it was pointed out that the vocabulary current in Volkskunde was ideally suited for the kind of ideology that the National Socialists had built up. It was then another 20 years before convening the 1986 Munich conference on folklore and National Socialism. This continues to be

15792-484: The printed page." Viewed as fragments from a pre-literate culture, these stories and objects were collected without context to be displayed and studied in museums and anthologies, just as bones and potsherds were gathered for the life sciences. Kaarle Krohn and Antti Aarne were active collectors of folk poetry in Finland. The Scotsman Andrew Lang is known for his 25 volumes of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books from around

15933-544: The recent past. In western culture, we live in a time of progress , moving forward from one moment to the next. The goal is to become better and better, culminating in perfection. In this model time is linear, with direct causality in the progression. "You reap what you sow", "A stitch in time saves nine", "Alpha and omega", the Christian concept of an afterlife all exemplify a cultural understanding of time as linear and progressive. In folklore studies, going backwards in time

16074-406: The research results. The final step in this methodology involves advocating for these groups in their distinctiveness. The specific tools needed by folklorists to do their research are manifold. The folklorist also rubs shoulders with researchers, tools and inquiries of neighboring fields: literature, anthropology, cultural history, linguistics, geography, musicology, sociology, psychology. This

16215-480: The rigging, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the 19th century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together. They were notably influenced by songs of African Americans, such as those sung whilst manually loading vessels with cotton in ports of

16356-484: The same regions, but their proximity to each other caused their traditions and customs to intermingle. The lore of these distinct social groups, all of them Americans, was considered the bailiwick of American folklorists, and aligned American folklore studies more with ethnology than with literary studies. Then came the 1930s and the worldwide Great Depression . In the United States the Federal Writers' Project

16497-442: The social group that becomes the focus for these folklorists, foremost among them Richard Baumann and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett . Enclosing any performance is a framework which signals that the following is something outside of ordinary communication. For example, "So, have you heard the one…" automatically flags the following as a joke. A performance can take place either within a cultural group, re-iterating and re-enforcing

16638-724: The songs that were performed. The original Thirteen Colonies of the United States were all former British possessions, and Anglo culture became a major foundation for American folk and popular music. Many American folk songs are identical to British songs in arrangements, but with new lyrics, often as parodies of the original material. Anglo-American traditional music also includes a variety of broadside ballads, humorous stories and tall tales, and disaster songs regarding mining, shipwrecks and murder. Folk songs may be classified by subject matter, such as: drinking songs , sporting songs , train songs, work songs , war songs , and ballads . Other American folksongs include: " She'll Be Coming 'Round

16779-562: The southern United States. The work contexts in which African-Americans sang songs comparable to shanties included: boat-rowing on rivers of the southeastern U.S. and Caribbean; the work of stokers or "firemen", who cast wood into the furnaces of steamboats plying great American rivers;and stevedoring on the U.S. eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean—including "cotton-screwing": the loading of ships with cotton in ports of

16920-419: The standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items which had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups and epochs. In an effort to understand and explain the similarities found in tales from different locations, the Finnish folklorists Julius and Kaarle Krohne developed

17061-572: The story while temporarily living in Birmingham , England. It was published in his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. While the story is set in New York 's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as

17202-407: The story, also varying each performance in response to multiple factors. Cybernetics was first developed in the 20th century; it investigates the functions and processes of systems. The goal in cybernetics is to identify and understand a system's closed signaling loop, in which an action by the system generates a change in the environment, which in turn triggers feedback to the system and initiates

17343-431: The study of German Volkskunde had yet to be defined as an academic discipline. In the 1920s this originally apolitical movement was coopted by nationalism in several European countries, including Germany, where it was absorbed into emerging Nazi ideology. The vocabulary of German Volkskunde such as Volk (folk), Rasse (race), Stamm (tribe), and Erbe (heritage) were frequently referenced by

17484-756: The tale, while at the same time allowing for the incorporation of new elements. Folklore of the United States American folklore encompasses the folklore that has evolved in the present-day United States mostly since the European colonization of the Americas . It also contains folklore that dates back to the Pre-Columbian era. Folklore consists of legends , music, oral history , proverbs , jokes , popular beliefs , fairy tales , stories, tall tales , and customs that are

17625-408: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folklore studies with cultural anthropology and ethnology . American folklorists thus used the same data collection techniques as these fields in their own field research . This the diverse alliance of folklore studies with other academic fields offers a variety of theoretical vantage points and research tools to

17766-407: The veracity of the stories is not a determining factor. Christopher Columbus , as a hero and symbol to the then-immigrants, is an important figure in the body of American myth. His status, not unlike most American icons, is representative not of his own accomplishments, but the self-perception of the society which chose him as a hero. Having effected a separation from England and its cultural icons,

17907-454: The week of Christmas and New Years’, owners would give their slaves a holiday. This provided a chance for slave families who had different masters to come together, otherwise, they would not go anywhere. Some slaves would craft items, but masters detested industrious slaves. So most slaves would spend their recreational time doing other things, like dancing and singing. Masters approved of such activities, but they may not have listened carefully to

18048-487: The world around them. Three major approaches to folklore interpretation were developed during the second half of the 20th century. Structuralism in folklore studies attempts to define the structures underlying oral and customary folklore. Once classified, it was easy for structural folklorists to lose sight of the overarching issue: what are the characteristics which keep a form constant and relevant over multiple generations? Functionalism in folklore studies also came to

18189-546: The world. Francis James Child was an American academic who collected English and Scottish popular ballads and their American variants, published as the Child Ballads . In the United States, Mark Twain was a charter member of the American Folklore Society. Both he and Washington Irving drew on folklore to write their stories. The 1825 novel Brother Jonathan by John Neal is recognized as

18330-582: The year are stressed as important." In a more specific example, the folklorist Barre Toelken describes the Navajo as living in circular times, which is echoed and re-enforced in their sense of space, the traditional circular or multi-sided hogan . Lacking the European mechanistic devices of marking time (clocks, watches, calendars), they depended on the cycles of nature: sunrise to sunset, winter to summer. Their stories and histories are not marked by decades and centuries, but remain close in, as they circle around

18471-639: Was also a valid avenue of exploration. The goal of the early folklorists of the historic-geographic school was to reconstruct from fragments of folk tales the Urtext of the original mythic (pre-Christian) world view. When and where was an artifact documented? Those were the important questions posed by early folklorists in their collections. Armed with these data points, a grid pattern of time-space coordinates for artifacts could be plotted. Awareness has grown that different cultures have different concepts of time (and space). In his study "The American Indian Mind in

18612-408: Was any mention of trains, stations, etc. in spirituals they were directly referencing the Underground Railroad, such as the song " Swing Low, Sweet Chariot ". These songs were designed so that slave owners thought that slaves were only singing about heaven. Work Songs at least had two functions: one to benefit the slaves and another to benefit overseers. When a group of slaves had to work together on

18753-416: Was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s. The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Burl Ives , Woody Guthrie , Lead Belly , and Oscar Brand had enjoyed

18894-437: Was designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States in alignment with efforts to promote and protect the cultural diversity of the United States and recognize it as a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. The term folklore contains component parts folk and lore . The word folk originally applied to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. A contemporary definition of folk

19035-558: Was established as part of the WPA . Its goal was to offer paid employment to thousands of unemployed writers by engaging them in various cultural projects around the country. These white collar workers were sent out as field workers to collect the oral folklore of their regions, including stories, songs, idioms and dialects. The most famous of these collections is the Slave Narrative Collection . The folklore collected under

19176-525: Was first articulated by the folklorist Walter Anderson in his monograph on the King and the Abbot published 1923. To explain the stability of the narrative, Anderson posited a “double redundancy”, in which the performer has heard the story from multiple other performers, and has himself performed it multiple times. This provides a feedback loop between repetitions at both levels to retain the essential elements of

19317-469: Was known as the Folklore Institute and in informal discourse the name remains synonymous with the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Prominent scholars in the history of the Folklore Institute include the following distinguished rank faculty: Stith Thompson , Richard M. Dorson , Linda Dégh , Henry Glassie , Richard Bauman , Beverly J. Stoeltje , and Hasan M. El-Shamy . Over its history,

19458-550: Was not progressing either toward wholeness or toward fragmentation. Individual artifacts must have meaning within the culture and for individuals themselves in order to assume cultural relevance and assure continued transmission. Because the European folklore movement had been primarily oriented toward oral traditions, a new term, folklife , was introduced to represent the full range of traditional culture. This included music , dance , storytelling , crafts , costume , foodways and more. In this period, folklore came to refer to

19599-478: Was posited that the stories, beliefs and customs were surviving fragments of a cultural mythology of the region, pre-dating Christianity and rooted in pagan peoples and beliefs. This thinking goes in lockstep with the rise of nationalism across Europe. Some British folklorists, rather than lamenting or attempting to preserve rural or pre-industrial cultures, saw their work as a means of furthering industrialization, scientific rationalism, and disenchantment . As

19740-464: Was taken at face value. In the 1970s, historians began to question the authenticity of Wirt's reconstruction. Betsy Ross (January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836) is widely credited with making the first American flag. There is, however, no credible historical evidence that the story is true. Research conducted by the National Museum of American History notes that the story of Betsy Ross making

19881-950: Was to emphasize the study of a specific subset of the population: the rural, mostly illiterate peasantry. In his published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of older, mostly oral cultural traditions still flourishing among the rural populace. In Germany the Brothers Grimm had first published their " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " in 1812. They continued throughout their lives to collect German folk tales to include in their collection. In Scandinavia , intellectuals were also searching for their authentic Teutonic roots and had labeled their studies Folkeminde (Danish) or Folkermimne (Norwegian). Throughout Europe and America, other early collectors of folklore were at work. Thomas Crofton Croker published fairy tales from southern Ireland and, together with his wife, documented keening and other Irish funeral customs. Elias Lönnrot

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