Quotes About Folklore

People who grew up in the Ozark Mountains are among the most superstitious group in American history. Their intuitions generally involved things like • A red sunrise is a sign of rain. • If a rooster crows near the back door, company is coming. • Ghostly visions of the Ozarkians are often believed to be beloved family members coming back from the dead to offer help or comfort. There were hundreds, often used

Clinton represented what would become a staple of American political folklore: the local populist boss, not overly punctilious or savory yet embraced warmly by the masses as one of their own.

Destined to serve seven terms as governor and two as vice president, Clinton represented what would become a staple of American political folklore: the local populist boss, not overly punctilious or savory yet embraced warmly by the masses as one of their own. As his biographer John Kaminski put it, "George Clinton's friends considered him a man of the people; his enemies saw him as a demagogue.

The last wendigo died in 1962, or so the story goes. Reputedly, he (it?) stood in front of the train to Churchill, Manitoba, believing that the train would stop for him, a supernatural being, and then he would be able to eat the passengers. The train ran him over. Sic transit gloria mundi.

In the tall tales told by firelight there was always a brief and laconic conversation.

I do have to wonder what sort of childhood the Grimm brothers endured. They are not a merry bunch of storytellers, what with their children roasted by witches, maidens poisoned by old crones, and whatnot.

Will looked at Evie funny. Advertising? Yes. You've heard of it, haven't you? Swell modern invention. It lets people know about something they need. Soap, lipstick, radios—or your museum, for instance. We could start with a catchy slogan, like, 'The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult—we've got the spirit!

Just because I believe in science doesn't mean I ignore superstition. Sometimes there's a basis for those superstitions.

Lurid tales are the South's principal export. - Rhett Butler

There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.

If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails.

the fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment.

the cure for a toothache was to slap the other side of your face.

Our myths, our legends, aren't necessarily true, but they are truly necessary.

A black cat crossed my path, and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme, Ou va-ti mistigri? Passe sans faire de mai ici.

Manatees are real, mermaids aren't. Rhinoceroses exist and sea monsters don't. There are no more sea serpents guarding deadly whirlpools. There are pirates, yes, but there is nothing romantic about them. The rest is all stories, and stories have been put in their place.

A child conceived on Christmas Eve is considered unlucky and will later resent his parents for their unholy transgression, their lack of control and piety. The child may be deformed with a harelip or be cursed with the ears and head of a wolf. Or the infant may be born a werewolf.

Don't matter if you caw, Don't matter if you shout. Crowbones will gitcha If you don't watch out! —Crowgard rhyme

Prithee Sirrah and Begorrah.

I'd love to see more novels and short stories where the characters have their own folklore that isn't the Plot-Bearing Prophecy of Doom.

Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people.

An Englishman will burn his bed to catch a flea' – TURKISH PROVERB

The word 'family' has always posed great difficulties. Until recently, high death rates for women in labour meant many stepmothers and, according to folklore, most of them wicked. After two world wars, we lost many fathers, and single- and step-parenting emerged from the rubble.

Fantasy encompasses a wide, wide spectrum of writing. We have beast fables, we have gothics, we have tales of vampires and werewolves, and we have sword and sorcery; we have epics from Homer, and there is just so much out there that we put under the umbrella of 'fantasy.'