Lore

Performance and Variation

Although the way we often talk about folklore seems to suggest that traditional stories, songs, or customs are an unchanging and uniform set of things, scholars have importantly noted that they exist only because they are performed. A legend, for instance, is more than just a plot outline repeated in the same way; it is something that is told by a person to other people under specific circumstances and for specific reasons.

Because each situation in which folklore is performed is different, it is important to understand that no two performances of folklore will be exactly the same. The timing of adding spices to a stew, the tone of voice used in a story, the pitch of a note in a song, and myriad other features may shift across different performances, dramatically changing the meaning or effect created by the performance.

Accordingly, over time, these differences may also result in variations in the traditions themselves. A widespread cluster of folktales from both African and African American traditions, for example, recounts a deceptive game of tug-of-war initiated by a trickster character. However, in some versions of the story the deception by the trickster involves tying his end of the rope to a tree, while in others the trickster orchestrates a tug-of-war between two large animals who are each unaware of their opponent's identity and strength.

Similarly, the identity of the trickster character can shift depending on the region where the folktale is being told. In African American versions of this and other folktales, the primary trickster character is usually a rabbit, whereas in Afro-Caribbean traditions it is generally a spider. These variations, although seemingly superficial, often reflect differences in social or cultural identities and can result in significant differences in performance and in the possible meanings that narrators can create with their stories.

Genres

Like other artistic or expressive forms, folklore has often been described as being organized into genres. Loosely speaking, folklore genres are sets of rules, often unspoken and learned from [Page 1373]previous observation that guide the production of traditional performances. Although the genres of folklore are too numerous and diverse to easily catalog, better-known examples might include proverbs, riddles, jokes, rhymes, myths, folktales, legends, tongue-twisters, insults, e-mail forwards, games, songs, beliefs, customs, dances, folk drama, forms of dress, festivals, foodways, folk arts, folk crafts, folk architecture, and folk decoration. This incomplete listing shows something of the range of forms by which scholars categorize folklore.

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