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20 Jan 16 - 04:16 AM (#3766875) Subject: Folklore: Origins of folk tales From: GUEST,Dave On Radio 4 this morning, researchers from Durham University and Lisbon, were claiming that many of the common European folk tales and fairy stories (Beauty and the Beast was mentioned specifically) date from the Bronze age, and although they were first written down in the 16th and 17th centuries were passed by oral tradition for thousands of years before that. Apparantly the Brothers Grimm thought that many of their tales were very old. People reading this forum know much more about this than me, so I wondered if anyone has any views? |
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20 Jan 16 - 05:05 AM (#3766879) Subject: RE: Folklore: Origins of folk tales From: GUEST Seems to concur with the conclusion reached by probably the finest scholar of the folktale, Stith Thomson. He wrote in his masterpiece, 'The Folktale' "This oral art of taletelling is far older than history and is not bounded by one continent or one civilisation" The Fenian Tales of Ireland and Scotland are often linked to The Bronze Age. For anybody interested in Folktales, I would highly recommend Stith Thomsons book - comprehensive, informative and far more readable than many Jim Carroll |
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20 Jan 16 - 05:13 AM (#3766882) Subject: RE: Folklore: Origins of folk tales From: Jack Campin One way you might infer that is by looking for variants of those stories in cultures which have been mostly speparated from each other for that long. One example might be the Nart sagas of the Caucasus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nart_saga The most archaic elements of those are in the versions in Northwest Caucasian languages (Abkhaz, Adyghe, Ubykh). That family (along with the Northeast Caucasian and South Caucasian groups) may be related to Indo-European but if so the divergence was more than 10,000 years ago. Since then they have had very little contact with any people from outside the area. I don't know that much about the details of those yarns. Some of them were collected by Gogol in his "Stories from the Village of Dikanka" - the one that stuck in my mind is a horrifying variant of the Prometheus legend. |
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20 Jan 16 - 05:57 AM (#3766889) Subject: RE: Folklore: Origins of folk tales From: GUEST,Dave Jack, from the brief discussion it sounds as if that was indeed a large part of their methodology . This is now on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35358487 |
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20 Jan 16 - 06:15 AM (#3766890) Subject: RE: Folklore: Origins of folk tales From: GUEST,Dave And the full article is here. I havn't read the whole thing, but note that the authors do indeed cite both Wilhelm Grimm, and Stith Thompson. |
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20 Jan 16 - 06:41 AM (#3766895) Subject: RE: Folklore: Origins of folk tales From: Jim Carroll Can I just add, regarding Grimm. I was lucky enough to come across the 2 volume, 'Grimm's Household Tales' with the author's' notes, edited and translated by Margaret Hunt (London 1884) - (cost me £12) a world of difference from the either anodyne or sensationalised versions freely available. Well worth looking out for. Folk tales are all too often watered down, reduced and produced for children when they were once very much an adult entertainment. We were fortunate enough to spend many hours (literally) recording some of the last few of the big Irish storytellers, mainly in Clare. We heard tales lasting well over an hour - we have had described to us a local man who would start his story on Monday night, break it off, continue it the following night, and so on, until Friday. Malcolm Taylor was kind enough to issue a cassette of our sample of tales recorded in the British Isles and Ireland, (not just ours) Sadly, it is no longer available, but anybody interested is welcome to a copy via Dropbox. JIm Carroll |