I fell in love with folklore from a very young age. My mother read to me from Mother Goose- I knew my nursery rhymes and learned the stories of Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk. My childhood was rich in magic. Fairies, elves, witches and trolls populated the deep dark woods of my imagination. But as I got older, I outgrew my belief in magic and stopped seeing the faces of trolls in rocks. I became evermore confident that the world was no longer like it had been, “Once upon a time”. And though I continued to visit the land of Dungeons and Dragons with my friends through role playing and alone through the fantasy literature of C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Tolkien, Piers Anthony and David Eddings among others, I was keenly aware that these worlds were unlike the one I was living in. Fairy tales do not tell children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales tell children that monsters can be killed. - G.K. Chesterton It wasn’t until I was in my third year of university that I rediscovered folklore. I came across a book of folktales, the Red Fairy book by Andrew Lang and started reading them and sharing them with my friends over pizza after work. There is something intoxicating both in hearing and telling a good story. I was hooked. I fell in love with the simple intricate plots and the themes that emerged. Themes like the strength of courage, the transformational power of love, the importance of loyalty and the value of a little trickery. I found the characters were struggling with many of the same challenges I was facing as a young man. They struggled to live up to their parents expectations,to become independent and mature, to resist easy temptations and to take on responsibility for others. They struggled to survive against an indifferent world, against villains who were possessed by jealousy, ambition, hatred or greed. These are all mature, complex themes that are found throughout all literature, but here in folklore they were explored simply yet thoroughly in a language that was easily understood by even children. The thematic richness and depth of folklore is not particularly surprising. For thousands of years before the invention of the printing press, folklore was passed down orally from one generation to the next. It has formed the basis of culture since the very beginning. Even Shakespeare himself borrowed heavily from it. These stories represented the collective wisdom of peoples and were a great source of both moral and practical life lessons. More than simply entertainment, they fostered a stronger sense of cultural identity and created an understanding of a shared heritage.
The act of telling stories and hearing stories in this way, strengthened memory and fostered discipline as well as listening skills. Most importantly, it engaged the imagination, which according to literary critic Northrope Frye is the seat of both empathy and innovation. “No matter how much experience we may gather in life, we can never in life get the dimension of experience that the imagination gives us. Only the arts and sciences can do that, and of these, only literature gives us the whole sweep and range of human imagination as it sees itself”. The capacity to see fairies in the dappled sunlight of a meadow is no different from the ability to see horseless carriages before they exist or envision riding in a metal bird. Every great leap in history whether technological or social began because someone imagined that the world could be different, better, than it was. Carl Jung saw the importance of folklore and myth in a different light. He made is the cornerstone of his psychology. He posited that we all interpret the world through constructed narratives that we borrow from stories deep in our unconsciousness. At times you might be Robin Hood, fighting to protect the helpless against tyrants. Other times, you will be the biblical Job- enduring suffering upon suffering at the hands of an ineffable God. There are times in your life when you will face the choice of Faust or find yourself flying too high like Icarus. Perhaps your life story isn’t so specific, but if you think about it for a moment, I am sure you can look back on the past year and easily tell whether it was a comedy, tragedy or romance. This structure is part of what gives our lives meaning. Try as we might, it is difficult to shake the belief that there is not some kind or order in the world. Whether it’s true or not, we all want to believe that there is a purpose to suffering, that good things happen to good people, that we should strive to be heroic and that it’s possible to live “Happily Ever After”. This is the wisdom, the practical and moral life lessons that these stories contain and this is why we must continue to tell them.
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