Quotes About Folklore

Mulan is so important in Chinese folklore - a fearless girl who cared about her family and country so much that she was willing to join the fight and sacrifice herself.

All primitive people are frightened of owls,' said Harley. 'The villagers here are scared to death of the gufo. Birds of ill omen. If they see one, they think they'll die. But they never do. See one, I mean, of course,' he added with a laugh.

Watch out for púcas as you travel, lad," Cody said, shaking my hand. "Could be imitating anything out there." "Once again," Tia said as she settled into the seat in front of me, "those are from Irish mythology, you nitwit.

I'm inspired by films from the early '50s, especially Jean Simmons in 'The Clouded Yellow' - and by vintage swing, psychobilly gigs, sea shanties, and English folklore.

The southern Chinese are a mixture of the Han, or northern Chinese, and the local tribes, some of which allowed women a great deal of freedom - much to the horror of the Chinese who were good Confucians. As a result, the folklore from southern China has strong females; and I found that the folktales mirrored my own experience.

That's how it is with werewolves. You have something, then you just have the story of it.

My grandfather used to tell me he was a werewolf. He'd

This is the way werewolf stories go. Never any proof. Just a story that keeps changing, like it's twisting back on itself, biting its own stomach to chew the poison out.

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

A man with a mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain and eyes like burning anthracite that was Dan'l Webster in his prime. And the biggest case he argued never got written down in the books, for he argued it against the devil, nip and tuck and no holds barred. And this is the way I used to hear it told.

Beast of Bray Road.' A journalist in her native

I just love rolling up my sleeves and doing research, and I especially love doing research on the origins of folklore and the origins of mythology.

It never hurts to have an army of garden gnomes protecting your property.

And that is the story of the boy who cried Dragon! Of course, when dragons sit around the campire at night or tuck their children into bed, they tell the story of the dragon who cried Boy!

I love gothic monsters, but I like to root them more firmly in the traditional folklore from which they sprang. Or at least, I like to evoke the feeling of those folk stories.

I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body.

We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle

Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters.

superstition needs no grounding in truth, but once rooted, it grows a strong though twisted tree.

You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.

Legends don't have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting.

And the nice thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown.

Hah! said Granny Weatherwax. I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about...cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about...something else entirely, she added darkly.