Quotes About Folklore

Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful.

Once humans learned how to enter the psychic plane, then it wouldn't be long before they discovered what shouldn't exist. Vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts. La Llorona. El Cucuy. Fairies. Then humans would do to us what they did to the dodo birds, the passenger pigeon, and most of the Native Americans.

Werewolves and silver bullets!" Shakespeare coughed a quick laugh and shook his head. "Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Mollie Carter would sing the hymns she loved best: "The Land of the Uncloudy Day," "Amazing Grace," or "The Gospel Ship." But she also sang traditional ballads, known as "English" songs, because the form—if not the songs themselves—had crossed the Atlantic with the English and Scotch-Irish who settled the southern mountains.

A rooster crowing in a doorway means visitors are coming. An old Scottish superstition. The

a perverse and unruly superstition

a drop of her moon blood fell to the earth. Rabbit saw it. He started to play with this tiny blood clot, kicking it around with his foot, and through the power of Tkuskanskan, the quickening, moving spirit, the blood clot firmed up and turned into We-Ota-Wichasha—Blood Clot Boy—the First Man.

The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.

Myths arise from actual events, remarkable events that get talked about precisely because they are remarkable and which then get embellished in the retelling.

Dragons in History by Eleanor Lock (Border Press, London, 1999)

Remember the fairy story "The Elves and the Shoemaker"? The shoemaker found that if he cut out the leather, and laid out the patterns before retiring, little elves came and actually put the shoes together for him while he was sleeping.

Faeries are equally loyal and deceitful.

Fairy tales were stupid. And dangerous.

LEPRECHAUN GOLD; FLOOR PLANS FOR GINGERBREAD HOUSES; TALKING FISH; GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE; TIK-TOK MEN;

Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful

In Sussex, if it's not the Devil that makes an appearance, then it's likely to be a dragon.

At the heart of every legend there is a grain of truth.

Pero la fondera no se dejaba por aquello de que la que da el beso da el queso.

Sigur c? lumea româneasc? este cum este ÅŸi are miturile ei fundamentale, care nu sunt MioriÅ£a ÅŸi MeÅŸterul Manole, ci capra vecinului ÅŸi povestea din iad, nu? În cazanul românilor, unde niciun român nu iese la suprafa?? fiindc?-l trag ceilalÅ£i de picioare. AÅŸa c? diavolii ÅŸomeaz?.

The dream becomes a story, a myth. . . . And the story becomes a dream.

Fairy tales, as Nell had said, are always complicated.

The French vampires started that rumor about carrying garlic so their victims would arrive already seasoned.

Perhaps she did not die," said Halla, "perhaps her nurse turned into a bear and carried her away into the forest. Perhaps she was brought up by bears and dragons. Perhaps it was better for her in the end than being a king's child." "That was never the story," said Modolf. "Forget the story," said Halla.

I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.