.I had imagined that a "Folk Tune" or a "Folk Tale" was simply a tune or story that has origins in antiquity --I was a little vague about that-- and whose author was unknown. In other words, I imagined that anything sufficiently old whose author was Anonymous is a piece of folk material.
This, of course, does not hold up to Scholarly Scrutiny. There is --no surprise-- a whole literary (and I mean that in the literary sense) field of scholarship of not only folk tales and fairy tales, but of literary criticism of the work of folk anthologists, such as the Brothers Grimm.
The categorization of a story as a folk tale or fairy tales depended, apparently, on its having come from an oral tradition. This seems reasonable, and is in line with the needs of precision in definition. So on one extreme, we have a story from an oral tradition (possibly authenticated by a collector, such as the Brothers Grimm, whose certification has to be carefully checked by the scholarly community), and on the other, we have simply a story of unknown origin, which emerges at some point in time, at least prior to the Victorian era, let us say, at which time interest in folk tales rapidly expanded. Unfortunately, here we hit a problem.
How does an oral tradition begin? Let's look at Nursery Rhymes, for a minute. The view among most sharp adults is that at least some nursery rhymes were --in contrast to being simple little bits of rhyme to keep little kids amused-- actually social or political commentary. In the case of such songs as "The Grand Old Duke of York" it is a little more obvious, even though, not being a student of history, the reference eludes me:
Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had six thousand men,
He marched them all to the top of hill
and marched them down again!
(The War of the Roses?) The rhyme
Ring a Ring of roses,
a pocket full of posies
ashes, ashes,
we all fall down!
is understood, at least by some, as reference both to the great bubonic plague, or possibly the fire of London, which were about the same time. (I remember reading somewhere that the ring of roses, as well as the ashes, was in fact a description of the symptoms of the plague, but I could be mistaken.) The doings of the nobility were often the subjects of the rhymes, especially if there was an implied criticism. How did the oral tradition come into being here? Does it matter whether the rhymes were passed down by oral tradition, or circulated on Broadsheets (a kind of renaissance protest poster)?
An article yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a scholar, Ruth Bottigheimer (who teaches at Stony Brook), has a theory that at least one family of fairy tales, namely the "rags to riches stories", such as Cinderella, and Puss in Boots, were synthetic creations, concocted by the putative "collector". Apparently the insiders of the study of folk tales and fairy tales were up in arms against this idea, because it overturns so many of the assumptions about the oral tradition of these stories.
The evidence is pretty strong, from where I'm sitting. It has to do with the fact that in the parts of Italy where one version of these stories emerged ("Constantino Fortunato"), conditions were ripe for the public to look favorably on a rags-to-riches story, and so the collector, known by the pen name of Straparola, accommodated them.
This overturn of accepted wisdom is the stuff of scholarly excitement, and bringing a sociological angle into a literary study is hardly a revolutionary idea. At any rate, sister Bottigheimer is enjoying considerable notoriety since 2005, when she first presented her ideas at a meeting of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research.
I encourage the reader to look up the article in question. One gets a vivid picture of the study of folk and fairy tales, and the amusingly violent reaction of academics to a fairly unsurprising theory. Taking the broad view, the folk aspect of the material becomes vague, when one thinks that the inspiration for it is either political or commercial, which is to say, sociological. The patina of age which is associated with folk material is romantic, but perhaps it is time for us to consider that the oral tradition we assumed that it originated in is not too essential for our enjoyment of it.
An interesting parallel is that of mistaken authorship. In the early part of the last century many musical compositions were misattributed to famous composers, and subsequently revealed to be the misattributions they were. Many of them are wonderful pieces, but as soon as the mistake emerged, the way the pieces were taken out of the mainstream was startling. It really brings out the Philistinism that masquerades as good taste in certain sectors of society.
[An interesting recent publication is the collection "Tales of Beadle the Bard" by J. K. Rowling. Ostensibly, these stories are, in the Harry Potter Universe, attributed to Beadle the Bard, a sort of medieval wizard, who created stories for children, collected by the 'modern' wizard Dumbledore, translated by Hermione Granger. They are, of course, simply written by Jane Rowling herself. Ah! But what are their real origins? Inquiring minds ought to be interested.]
Oh what a fuss they make about folk art! The 20th century seethed with indignation over many things: folk song, folk music, early music and authentic instruments, and historically informed performance. I must admit that I, myself, have been involved in despair over inauthentic performances of my favorite music. But life is too short to keep butting one's head against such things; obviously one wants to hear things played the way one likes, but it seems preposterous, in retrospect, to insist that everyone should prefer them played the same way. In earlier posts, I have given links to performances of the same piece in contrasting styles. Often, both performances are perfectly acceptable, even if one or the other brings out additional nuances that one might truly miss if they were absent.
Tomorrow: Folk Music of the Sixties.
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