Defining Folklore

Folklore is a scholarly discipline with its own substantial, worldwide body of scholarship. There is scope to think that Folklore developed along with or even before the development of human civilization. In that sense, folklore is the oldest and earliest intellectual and cultural assets of human civilization though the term “folklore” is of recent origin. The concept of folklore emerged in the late 18^th century, while the term was proposed by William Thoms in 1846, apparently a translation of the German term “Volkskunde”, in lieu of the labels of “Popular Antiquities” or “Popular Literature” through a letter written to literary journal “Athenaeum” (Padun:1991). The “folklore” is now a term of international acceptance.

The word “folklore” combines two conceptual terms “folk” and the”lore”. The word “folk”, as defined by Alan Dundes, refers to “any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor. It does not matter what the common factor is... but what is important is that a group formed for whatever reason will have some traditions which it calls its own” (Dundes:1965:2) while the word “lore” denotes traditions and knowledge of the group. Folklore as defined by Archer Taylor is “the material that is handed on by tradition, either by words of mouth or by custom and practice. It may be folksongs, folktales, riddles, proverbs, or other materials preserved in words” (Taylor:1965).

The term folklore ordinarily denotes both the material and the discipline of the study. However, in modern day scholarship, the term “folklore” generally denotes the content of study while the discipline is referred as the Folkloristics i.e. the scientific study of folklore. Similarly, another term the “Folklife” also has gained certain acceptance. Nevertheless, irrespective of terminology applied, folklore is acknowledged as a vast, rich and intellectual domain of study contemporaneously, which includes numbers of areas and subjects of study. In other words, folklore and folklife embraces a vast body of material within it.

However, they can be categorized in the following broad divisions as proposed by Richard M. Dorson (Padun:1991):

1. Oral Literature / Verbal Art or Expressive Literature,
2. Physical Folklife or Material Culture,
3. Social Folk Custom, and
4. Performing Folk Arts.

Simultaneously, Alan Dundes have made the following divisions (ibid):

1. Verbal Art,
2. Folk-Art-Industry,
3. Folk Poetry, and
4. Folk Games.

The divisions of folklore, mentioned above by Dorson or Dundes, includes number of sub-divisions within it. Again, the classifications are not watertight, rather there are often notice overlapping among the categories.

It is legitimately held that the study of folklore is not the study of mere text; rather it always demands contextual and textural aspects of the folklore materials. In fact, the context and texture along with the text is equally important in the discipline of folklore. Hence, it is often held and avowed that Folklore is primarily a field-based study. It is because, the folklore materials are mostly living materials of culture, encounter in the fields only. Simultaneously, one will not deny that the context and texture is perceivable only in the actual fields. Hence, in order to grasp the unique qualities, aspects, flavour, charm, and traditionality of a folklore item, it demands the empirical appreciation. Thus, against the common misapprehension about the discipline of folklore of studying old, dead, frozen, and out-dated material, conversely, it studies the prevailing scenario, the living and ever renewed traditional materials in a pragmatic way.