Folklore
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the science which embraces all that relates to ancient observances and customs, to the notions, beliefs, traditions, superstitions, and prejudices of the common people. Gomme's divisions are: (1) Traditional Narratives: (a) Folk-tales, (b) Hero Tales, (c) Ballads and Songs, (d) Place Legends; (2) Traditional Customs: Cu (a) Local Customs, (b) Festival Customs, (c) Ceremonial Customs, (d) Games; (3) Superstitions and Beliefs: (a) Witchcraft, (b) Astrology, (c) Superstitious Practices and Fancies; (4) Folk-speech: (a) Popular Sayings, (b) Popular Nomenclature, (c) Proverbs, (d) Jingle Rhymes, Riddles, etc. Folklore had indeed been observed and noted by countless writers from the Father of History downward, but it was not till after the beginning of the 19th century that its value for the elucidation of the social history of mankind had become apparent to thinkers, and its systematic study been seriously begun. Meantime the reawakening to natural poetry and to the beauty of free emotional expression in literature, which lay at to the foundation of what it is usual call Romanticism, had already commenced even in the 18th century, and the publi- Percy's "Reliques of Ancient cation of P pre English Poetry" (1765) had given a powerful impulse to Scott and others in England, to Herder, and to Arnim and Brentano in Germany, who found lying to hand a rich wealth of traditional poetry, the poetic value of which they fortunately had the eyes to see. for But the study of folksongs really began with Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" (1802-1803). Popular traditions began to be valued dul duly just as they began to decline and disappear; but fortunately a plentiful crop had been gathered and put into writing beyond the risk of oblivion. Such works as E. B. Tylor's "Primitive Culture" (1871), and G. L. Gomme's "Folklore Relics of Early Village Life" (1883), have shown us what significant constructive results may already be attained with the evidence we possess.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 it took its scheme from George Laurence Gomme and its theory from E. B. Tylor: folklore was the study of "survivals" of primitive belief lingering among "the common people," and it was worth collecting chiefly because it was dying out. That evolutionary survivalist framework was dismantled over the twentieth century; folklorists after about 1960, led in America by Richard Dorson and Alan Dundes, redefined the field as the study of living informal culture in any group, including cities, offices, campuses and now the internet, where jokes, rumours, urban legends and memes are treated as folklore in exactly the sense ballads once were. The discipline also acquired the institutional apparatus the entry could not foresee: the Aarne evised again as the ATU index in 2004), the American Folklife Center in Washington from 1976, and UNESCO's 2003 convention on intangible cultural heritage, which treats living traditions as something to be sustained rather than merely recorded before they vanish.
Written for this edition, 2026.