The Scope of Folklore

Abstract

THE terra " Folklore " was, I believe, coined by W. J. Thorns, who defined it as " that department of the study of antiquities and archaeology which embraces everything relating to ancient observances and customs, to the notions, beliefs, traditions, superstitions and prejudices of the common people." This definition held the field for many years, but more recently a new definition was adopted by this Society. Folklore is now said to consist of " the oral culture and traditions of the folk, that is folk-beliefs, customs, institutions, pastimes, sayings, songs, stories, and arts and crafts, both as regards their origin and their present social functions."There are, in effect, two changes. The term " folk " is substituted for " common people ", and arts and crafts are included. As regards the first, though the term is different, the implication is the same. It is true that the term " folk " can be held to embrace the population as a whole, but what is implied by the rest of the definition is that it is only among the uneducated that anything will be found worthy of the Society's attention.As for the arts and crafts, they have yet to make their appearance in our Journal, the contributions to which are almost entirely confined to superstition and what is known as oral literature. Now if this Society is to continue as a thriving institution, it is, so it seems to me, high time that we broke new ground. 1 think this for three reasons. The first is that to confine one's studies to moribund superstitions is a somewhat gloomy and barren proceeding, little calculated to attract those who are interested in the present as well as the past. Secondly, the class of matter which has filled our Journal for so many years is obviously tending towards exhaustion. Thirdly, many of the customs and beliefs which were new to the earlier students of folklore are now known to be, or to have been, universal in Britain, if not throughout the world. When a custom or belief has once been found to have a wide distribution, a report of its existence in some new place is of little interest, unless that new place is well outside the area of its previously known occurrence.As an example of what I mean I shall take the folk play, which has 98

A Definition of Folklore: A Personal Narrative

“…Twenty years earlier, as folklorists around the world celebrated the centennial of William Thoms' (1803Thoms' ( -1885 coinage of the term "Folk-Lore", 5 its reassessment and re-evaluation was in full force. The respective presidential addresses of Melville Herskovits (1895Herskovits ( -1963, 6 then president of the American Folklore Society (Herskovits 1946), and Lord Raglan (1885Raglan ( -1964, then president of the Folklore Society in England (Raglan 1946), were concerned with the indefiniteness of folklore, or the inertness of the discipline that the term had initiated.…”