3. Classifying Folklore

Collected folklore texts, descriptions of customs, or artifacts are of little use to a scholar until identified by category and ar­ranged systematically in an archive (or museum) or published [1, p.27]. Classification of the myriad forms of folklore facilitates their study just as classification systems do for the natural sciences: without standardized terminology and arrangement, we could not communicate effectively or gather data from archives and published collections. The difficulty is that ethnic or “native” categories differ a great deal from culture to culture or even from person to person. The more abstract “analytical” categories devised by scholars have not always yielded mutually exclusive systems, nor have they won universal scholarly acceptance. Any classification, it should be borne in mind, is always for a purpose; and, for the purpose of organizing data for analysis, certain traditional categories have become established in the voluminous reference works for motifs, tales, ballads, superstitions, riddles, proverbs, and other forms. These classification systems, whatever their shortcom­ings, have yet to be superseded; they structure the balance of this book and are cited in the appropriate bibliographic notes.

There are many types of folklore:

Verbal folklore, the type most commonly studied in the United States, may be logically classified from the simplest to the most complex varieties.

Partly verbal folklore, as the term indicates. Traditional phrases and sentences make up the area of folk proverbs and proverbial sayings, while traditional questions are folk riddles.

Party verbal folklore, as the term indicates, is folklore made up of both verbal and non-verbal elements. Popular beliefs and superstitions. Other manifestation of party verbal models of existence are folk games, folk dramas, folk dences, folk customs and folk festivals.

Non-verbal folklore includes both traditional materials of folk architecture, arts, crafts, cistumes, and foods, and the nonmaterial traditions of gestures and folk music [10, p. 57].

Also folklore is divided into two big groups -ceremonial and not ceremonial.

Ceremonial folklore treat: calendar folklore (Christmas carols, Pancake week songs, vesnyanka), family folklore (family stories, lullabies, wedding songs, lamentations), occasional.

Not ceremonial folklore is devided into four groups: folklore drama, poetry, prose and folklore of speech situations. The folklore drama treat: Parsley theater, vertepny drama, religious drama [13, p.156].

Folklore poetry treat: ballad , bylina, spiritual verse, lyrical song, cruel romance, chastooshka, children's poetic songs (poetic parodies), historical song , sadistic rhymes. The folklore prose besides shares on two groups: fantastic and not fantastic. Fantastic prose treat: the fairy tale (which, in turn, happens four types: magic fairy tale, fairy tale on animals, household fairy tale, cumulative fairy tale) and joke. Not fantastic prose treat: the legend, a legend, a bylichka, the mythological story, the story about a dream. Folklore of speech situations treat: proverbs, sayings, blagopozhelaniye, damnations, nicknames, draznilka, dialogue graffiti, riddles, tongue twisters and some other. There are also written forms of folklore, such as letters of happiness, graffiti, albums.

Myths are the stories of the gods and other supernatural beings. Usually in prose, they explain natural phenomena; often they parallel the religions of advanced cultures, forming the basis of the individual’s adjustment to his universe and the unseen powers in it. In America different Indian tribes had their own bodies of myths, with common characteristics but varying in response to a tribe’s peculiar environment and history.

A myth is a story with a specific purpose. It tries to explain how the world is arranged. Myths also tells about the relationship between gods and humans. Even in spite of the events in a myth are usually impossible, they try to send a message that has an important social or religious meaning.

People have always tried to find out from common questions like who made the universe or questions like what causes a storm. Religion, gods, and myths were created when people tried to make sense out of these questions. For early people myths were like science because they explain how things work. They also explained other questions that are now answered through contemporary science.

Legends are stories of what supposedly took place in earlier times. Sometimes the details are difficult to confirm, but usually the story names people and identifies locations. The person who telling the story usually doesn't claim to be an eyewitness to the events, but heard it from someone who knows someone who heard it from someone who was really there.

Legends often contain a moral or a lesson and are told to uphold the values of the community. They often involve supernatural or religious elements [Legends: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Folklore/english/legendese/legendesintro.htm]. Traditions are the inherited explanations, attitudes, and responses orally transmitted as a part of folk educa­tion. They may concern events, objects, people, places, or behavior patterns.

Myths may be subdivided into such classifications as ritual myths, origin myths, incidents involving the lives of the gods, trickster tales, journeys to the other world, stories of culture heroes, human and animal marriages, adaptations of old world myths, and retellings of biblical stories.

Legends and traditions may be grouped under the following headings: place legends, buried treasure legends, miracle stories, saints’ legends, migration legends, stories of natural wonders or extraordinary places, tales of legendary characters, stories of sacred objects, stories of ghosts, devils, vampires, witches, ogres, and haunted houses, accounts of transformation and supernatural appearances, and accounts of mythical animals [10, p.53].

If legends are folk history, then folktales are the prose fiction of oral literature. Folktales are traditional narratives that are strictly fictional and told primarily for entertainment, although they may also illustrate a truth or a moral. Folktales range in length and subject matter from some European stories about fantastic wonders and magical events that take hours—even days—of narration, to brief American topical jokes with concentrated plots and snappy punch lines that are told in minutes. The term “folktale” usually connotes the complex, so-called fairy tale, familiar in children’s literature. But there is no valid justification for ignoring recent tales that may have more realistic plots. Not only have these recent types of folktale replaced fairy tales in most American and many foreign oral traditions, but also, more often than not, these contemporary tales turn out upon investigation to have ancient parallels.

The folktales of the world, like the myths and legends, encompass a great variety of different narrative elements contained in a fairly limited array of basic forms, and both the details and the general outlines of specific folktales appear in widespread cultures and through great reaches of time. The recognition of these similarities spurred attempts in Europe in the early nineteenth century to organize comparative folktale research and to trace tales back to their origins. By the late nineteenth century a standard methodology had emerged, along with the first of several important reference publications; since analogous folktale materials and similar methods of study are found in the United States, it is appropriate to review this European background [10, p.86].

Thus in the first chapter we have come to the following conclusion:

1.1 Historical value of folklore in the fact that he is a spiritual biography of the working nation, the poetic chronicle of its centuries-old life and fight. National creativity has reflected all stages of development of human nature, the development of his consciousness.

Folklore gives not only the historical picture of the spiritual development of the people. From the works of all its genres is multi-faceted and at the same time a whole and unique character of all the people.

1.2 The science folkloristics is engaged in studying of folklore. This a new direction, which covers many different species. The study of folklore is very important, because only by knowing our past, we can judge about the present and future of the world. Folklorists analyze and compare the legends, myths and traditions between the different Nations, find similarities and differences, study the relationship between nations and their influence on each other. There are many methods to the study of folklore.

1.3 There are different classification features and characteristics, because folklore is very versatile. It is mainly divided into Verbal, Nonverbal, Party verbal folklore and Partly verbal folklore. But there are also a Ceremonial folklore and non - Ceremonial folklore.

Separately, we can identify the myths and legends. Most often it is made-up stories which explain different phenomena of nature, stories of heroes and the creation of the world.

Folklore works are anonymous. Their author - the nations. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition.