昔話館　Fables and Folklore

We all grew up with them and probably to this day you can recite them word for word. I am talking about fables. Those little stories that we learned when were a child and without us even knowing it had a huge influence on our upbringing and even our moral structure. "How can one little story have that much power?" you say? Well take the example of "The Enormous Turnip". It teaches that when you can't do something yourself ask your family or even the community around you. "Peter and the Wolf" taught us not to lie,"Momotaro" taught us to be nice to animals and "Snow White"(book form not the movie) taught us it is ok to make mistakes over and over again. But sadly as the world moves forward it is starting to forget that these fables and stories are an essential part of human life. As humans move into bigger cities and bigger apartment buildings we don't even know who are neighbors are. Maybe it is time we started asking for help with the turnip again? ;0)

So is the difference between a legend and a folktale?

Legends are pretty much 100% fiction. They are stories that were created to decribe why things happened, how things started and the like. Now folktales are a bit more interesting. For the most part folktales have some percentage of truth in them. It might be a very small percentage but there is a sliver of truth hidden in there between the wolves and the witches. The Brothers Grimm collection of stories are famous for their "original darkness" which seems to have been watered down with each publishing. Sometimes the darkest stories of all come not from legends and monsters but from reality itself.

As mentioned before folklore can be a window into the society mind. Of course there are the dark parts which are portrayed by Hansel and Gretel's stepmother,the hungry witch in the woods, Snow White's stepmother (She was her real mother in the original), the big bad wolf, mountain hags, snakes in human form and just monsters in general. But to every coin there is another side. Perfect examples of these would be Momotaro's parents, the 7 dwarves, Urashimataro, Crane maiden and all of the other nice people who always decide to help rather than ignore in folktales. Folktales are not just stories to tell us about what went on. They are stories to teach us how to grow as people, live with our neighbors, people and other living things that surround us everyday. As humans fall more and more into living solidary lives these stories are becoming forgotten and so are the skills needed to have good human contact.