Quotes About Folklore

A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation.

I like mythology - anything historical.

I was definitely drawn to the mythology of one man, one voice, and one guitar.

I am attracted to myths.

Mythology works... because Indians have been bred on myths.

I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.

To us, basing stories on christianity is the same as basing stories on Roman mythology, Native American folklore, or unsubstantiated government conspiracies.

If you are a vampire, then a vampire is not the creature of the legends.

I loved idiot paintings, tops of doors, decors, saltimbanques, canvases, signboards, popular engravings, obsolete literature, church Latin, badly-spelled pornographic works, novels by our grandmothers, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, folk refrains, popular rhythms. —Rimbaud, "A Season in Hell

Here's a book about gnomes, undines, salamanders, elves, sylphs, fairies, but it, too, brings in the origins of Aryan civilization. The SS, apparently, are descended from the Seven Dwarfs.

Superstition brings bad luck. —Raymond Smullyan, 5000 B.C., 1.3.8

SOUTHEASTERN OHIO USA

Poppy: Um, can we cross running water? James: Sure. And we can walk into people's homes without being invited, and roll in garlic if we don't mind losing friends.

singing ballads whose words had never known paper but lived only on the rasping edge of their own voices.

You know the stories of my grandfather, I am sure?" Jesse asked. Lucie raised an eyebrow. "The one who turned into a great worm because of demon pox, and was slain by my father and uncles?" "I feared your parents would not have considered it the kind of tale suitable for a young lady's ears," said Jesse. "I see that was an idle concern." "They tell it every Christmas," said Lucie smugly.

I always knew there were vampires, dude," he'd said. "Because, you know how there's people you know who, like, always look the same, even when they're, like, a hundred years old? Like David Bowie? That's because they're vampires.

Legends, then, are seldom formed out of thin air. They grow out of something real. That original something may be extremely different from the final legend, but the kernel of truth is there nevertheless.

Just you wait. Papa Koschei is coming, coming, coming, over the hills on his red horse and he's got bells on his boots and a ring in his poket and he knows your name, Marya Morevna.

Hounds and hearthstones, girl, haven't you ever heard a story about Koschei? He's only got the one. Act one, Scene one: pretty girl. Act one, Scene two: pretty girl gone!

It was a combination of old magic and a woman's wisdom with God's herbs, and most of it is lost. People then didn't write their wisdom down. They relied on the seanachai to tell the story aloud

We can say the brotherhood of man, and pretend that we include the sisterhood of women, but we know that we don't. Folklore has it that women only congregate to bitch an absent member of their group, and continue to do so because they are to well aware of the consequences if they stay away. It's meant to be a joke, but like jokes about mothers-in-law it is founded in bitter truth.

A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs

Any man can lose his hat in a fairy-wind.

Who brings a tale takes two away.