Folklore Quotes

“For the making of a ballad, a people, not a poet, is required.”

“The popular ballad is a distinct and very important species of poetry.”

“It is not for me to say that the question of the origin of the ballad is a futile one, but it is a question which I have never been able to approach without a sense of utter inadequacy.”

“I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle.”

“Myths are sacred narratives, essential to the society that tells them.”

“And the gobble-uns'll git you ef you don't watch out!”

“The backwoodsman was afoot and on horseback, a rover, a gambler, a sharp-shooter, a great laugher.”

“It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?”

“Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men.”

“From a psychoanalytic point of view, fairy tales are the dreams of the culture.”

“No piece of folklore is ever insignificant.”

“They call the wind Maria.”

“The text of a traditional ballad is often a fragile thing, a phantom which is always eluding our grasp.”

“Folklore is the autobiographical ethnography of the folk.”

“The Brothers Grimm are not the source of the fairy tales. They are the collectors.”

“To study folklore is to study humanity.”