Christian,

What Richard said.

Also,

If you are going to write some sort of academic paper about "folk traditions"
and if the paper is to be in some sense "scholarly"
You need to make sure your paper has the following three components in addition to all the other stuff.
1. A review of the literature - what other scholars have mean by "folk traditions" (to prove that you have done your homework)
2. A detailed explanation of what you will mean by "folk traditions" (to prove that you have attained some level of conceptual clarity about your topic)
3. Some sort of justification for your usage of the term "folk traditions" in the paper (to prove that you have actually though about the homework you've done)

Apologies, of course, if I have simply stated the obvious.

Russ (Permanent GUEST and pedant in remission)