Quotes About Folklore

Can you kill a ghost by driving a knitting needle through her heart?

I told you it was a backwoods. They probably still practice corn sacrifice.

The Magical Negro rested his red cane on his shoulder and leisurely strolled into the forest to see if he could find him some hobbits, castles, dragons, princesses, and all that other shit.

The Fay have always preferred a good story over a well-thought plan.

My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.

Dutifully I knock on the table. "What does knock on wood even mean?" Daddy perks up. "Actually, it's thought to come from Greek mythology. According to Greek myths, dryads lived in trees, and people would invoke them for protection. Hence knocking on wood: just that added bit of protection so as not to tempt fate.

Then you have people who say you can tell when rain is coming because the cows are lying down. Not so. According to my new friend at the Met Office, cows lie down because they are tired.

[T]he song.... was about a young girl who lived in the Hartz Mountains, and who had given up her life to save her lover's soul; and he died, and met her spirit in the air; and then, in the last verse, he jilted her spirit, and went on with another spirit...

Yes, they put their babies inside an iron stove full of coals. So, if you see a Russian person doing something crazy, as you sometimes do, remember—they have been doing that shit forever. It's nothing new.

This is a book about America's demons. Many of those demons are imaginary, but all of them have truths to tell us. A conspiracy story that catches on becomes a form of folklore. It says something true about the anxieties and experiences of the people who believe and repeat it, even if it says nothing true about the objects of the theory itself.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves . . . Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.

Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?

Magpie' by The Unthanks),

It's like the old stories

places that sold pixie-shittery to the tourists.

Pretty much every society, every culture in the world has some version of the Arthur legend, so everybody knows it; certainly in the western world, everybody knows King Arthur, but nobody knows what happens next.

It is important to recognize that folklore is not simply a way of obtaining available date about identity for social scientists; it is actually one of the principal means by which an individual and a group discovers or establishes his or its identity.

The most fascinating thing for me is that 'Peter Pan' is a fairy tale, but now, this Filipino kid is a part of the folklore. Can you imagine telling the story of 'Sleeping Beauty' or 'Cinderella,' and all of a sudden there's a Filipino kid in there after all these years?

The human race has been telling stories since it began.

Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good old nurse will speak when she tells fairy tales.

Country music tells stories, and I've always loved to tell stories.

Indian burial grounds had a dark reputation in the folklore of the American West, and there were few men who had not heard some tale of the vengeful spirits who haunted such places, and of the terrible curses they might impart on those who strayed disrespectfully into their sacred lands.

Superstition is the child of ignorance and fear.

Oh, yes, there was a witch; there are always witches where there are children.