"Debates, how folklore' should be defined, have been waged ever since the word was coined in 1846 by William Thomas. wrote Alan Thomas in 1865. A host of participants in the great debate were the leading lights of the Arnerican folklorology: Alan Dundes, Yoder, Francis Lee Utley. William Bascom Archer Taylor, Albert B. Lord and others. Mainly the bone of con-tention of the ideological contest was the term 'Folk. That does not mean that they could find unanimity in defining 'lore
"The twenty one concise difinitions contained in the first volume of standard-dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend reflect some of this diversity.
There appears to be a consensus among folklore scholars that "lore" is the material and folks are the users of the materials. But that does not take us very far. It is a circuitous definition. The differences erupt when the question is raised, "Who are the "folks?" or "What are the materials?"
Let us just discuss how 'folk' is understood by a few Ameri-can scholars. European scholars attribute rural background or agricultural occupation and bonds with land to the 'folks'. Even though the folks are pulled up from their native soil and are forced by circumstances to migrate to towns, they carry the traditions of their former rural culture to the towns. These traditions die hard for centuries though slowly modified by the urban tradition.
But the American scholars reject concept of the folk as a narrow definition. This is expressed by Dundes:
"There are still some folklorists who mistakenly identify folks with peasant society or rural groups. He argues that if this definition is accepted, it will follow, that city dwellers were riot folks and they could not have folklore. He advances the concept, "The term 'folk' can refer to any group of people what soever, who share at least one common factor. him the linking factor may be a common occupation, language or According to religion.
It is understandable that a scholar working in a highly industrialised society with a peculiar historical background of the new world could define folk, separating the folks from the rural back-ground and peasant society. The mass of European folk emerged from peasant society and rural groups in feudal formation as industrial workers during the three centuries of industrial and social revolution. It was during these centuries that the same rural groups, pauperised by the effects of the first stage of the industrial revolution, migrated to the newly discovered "India" in search of a new life. They began their material life from scratch. clearing forests and settling there as independent farmers. They brought with them folk-cultures from several countries, Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Germany. There was no machine-industry to speak of at the dawn of history of the new world. These different folk-cultures existed side, by side the linking factors being their mode of material life and religion. Their life was set in rural setting and they formed farmer communities and political states. The unity, forged in the struggle for independence, started the process of integration of different European cultures into a national American culture. The main strain of the national culture was naturally English, which absorbed other European cultures and got modified itself.
Industrialisation of urbanised America resulted in population transfers. Giant factories arose in cities sucking the rural popuMation into them. Farms were mechanised to solve the problem of shortage of labour. Thus "the peasant societies and rural background was unnecessary for the folks of America. In 1973, five per cent of the population were engaged in farming. Workers, both of blue color and white collar in cities, predominated in the population of the U. S. A.
The Americans began their history without a feudal society. with peasants as the working force to produce surplus to the barons and kings for their luxurious life. Hence their folks are not peasants or rural groups. The definition containing the attributes. rural background and peasant community so much contested by American folklore scholars is really too narrow in the American context.
The dominance of industrial and financial monopolies, who own the means of production and mass media of culture, naturally dominate the cultural trends in the country. In this situation, 'folk cannot be defined as bearers of rural culture or the culture of peasant society. American scholars are yet to define folk and folk-culture or lore. They can only enumerate what they consider as the lore of the folks. It is just what anthropologists like Bascom and folklore scholars like Dundes have done. Their catalogue of folklore ie becoming more and more lengthy with the passage of years. Dundes gives a partial list of the 'lore. He divides them into major lore forms and minor. Myth and folk-tale belong to the major types. Other types include legends, folktales, jokes, proverbs, riddles, chants, charms, blessings, curses, faiths, insults, retorts, taunts, teasings, tongue-twisters. It also includes costu-mes, folk-dance, drama, folk-songs, folk-medicine, folkmetaphors, bouncing rhyme, jumprope rhymes, dandling rhymes, counting out rhymes, nursery rhymes, finger and toe rhymes, folkrecipes, quilt and embriodery signs, house, barn and fence types, street vendor's cries, conventional sounds and signs to call animals, pneumonic writings and pictures.
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