About Folk Tales

Folk tale is a story or legend forming part of an oral tradition. It is passed on by word of mouth rather than by writing, and thus partly modified by successive re‐tellings before being written down or recorded. The category includes legends of all types, fables, jokes, tall stories, humorous anecdotes, and fairy tales. Many folktales involve mythical creatures and magical transformations.

This term can be used either broadly or narrowly. In the broad sense, it applies to all prose narratives following traditional storylines, which are told orally, or were so told in previous generations. The original author is always unknown; in the rare cases where an individual who shaped the current version has been identified, the tellers are unaware of this. Most tales seem to have been formed by recombining traditional elements (‘motifs’) and/ or transferring an established plot (‘tale-type’) from one hero, or one location, to another. 

The narrow definition restricts itself to the avowedly fictional narratives in the above list, excluding legends and memorates, since these claim to be true. This is regrettable, since legends make up a very high proportion of our corpus of traditional narratives and still circulate vigorously, while memorates are a major source for the study of current beliefs.