Quotes About Folklore

People in Ireland believed that fairies or the gentle folk were not earthly, having originated on other planets. Fairies often travel about the skies in cloudlike aerial boats called "fairy boats" or "spectre ships" (Rojcewicz 1991, p. 481).

Light a campfire and everyone's a storyteller

Under Chairman Mao, every Chinese family was obliged to kill a sparrow a week to stop them eating all the rice. The project was ineffective because sparrows don't eat rice.

When did blues emerge? We have all heard variations on a mythic answer: The blues been here since time began Since the first lyin' woman met the first cheatin' man.

What's the symbolic association between a beast killed by a silver bullet and the moon?

Faeries can be quite mean if they are provoked.

Old stories often turn out to be true.

Split a young ash sapling a few feet down its trunk. At sunrise, pass the child through the cleft, three to nine times, against the sun. Then bind the tree and plaster the fissure with mud or clay. If the tree fares well, so will the child.

J'aimais les peintures idiotes, dessus de portes, décors, toiles de saltimbanques, enseignes, enluminures populaires ; la littérature démodée, latin d'église, livres érotiques sans orthographe, romans de nos aïeules, contes de fées, petits livres de l'enfance, opéras vieux, refrains niais, rythmes naïfs.

Sucede que el diablo es muy astuto. Sucede que no siempre es tan feo como dicen. (J. Cazotte. El diablo enamorado)

I'm also looking for gems that the average reader might have missed.

There used to be grandparents who would say that if you were misbehaving the Peaky Blinders would get you, they were the bogeymen.

The great thing about America is that people take its history and mythologise it.

I have never wanted to check out the family folklore that we could be traced back to a dominie at the hamlet of Balquhidder in the Scottish highlands.

If the Devil created Texas like some folks say he did, this is where he rested on the seventh day.

We used to have songs for everything, and nobody knows the songs anymore. There were songs for dogs, for good dogs and bad dogs, and songs to make them work or track bear. There were songs for all of everything.

Pixies, the first communists.

There's a ton of stuff in mythology and folklore that is loaded with wonderful creatures that I haven't drawn yet, but that's kind of my retirement plan. Theoretically, I won't be doing comics any longer, and I'll just be drawing and painting whatever the hell I want. Most of that will be monsters.

I'm always wondering, if Bigfoot's not real, then why does this creature show up in all these different cultures? I'm always fascinated by that kind of stuff.

The Bible is filled with stories about angels, but many of us have had our view of angels confused by popular misconceptions about them, the principal of which is that angels do not actually exist anymore than fairies do, or wood nymphs or water sprites. But they do exist, and the Bible attests to their existence innumerable times.

Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet.

I'm obsessed with the countryside: woods, forests, fields, lakes, mountains. I'm really into folk music and folklore. But more so I'm into electronic music. I'm into bands that have both aspects, like Boards of Canada is a perfect example. You could listen to that type of music running through a woods. It's kind of what I wanted to achieve.

Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller.

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.