Liz Warren | Storyteller

      Where do we find folktales?  For most of human history that question would have made no sense. We wouldn’t have found folktales; we would have been immersed in them, and in the broader folk tradition that contained them. Most of us did not grow up in a living story tradition, so we find folktales from print resources.  That has been increasingly true since the 1800’s when collectors like the Grimms began putting folktales in books.  And thank heavens they, and others all over the world, did. 

Modern storytellers are almost completely dependent on books and the internet for the folktales we love to tell.  We may hear someone else tell a folktale and become inspired to tell it, but we still track down the print version, and maybe a variant or two, to craft our own version.  We all have our favorite anthologies.  One of my favorites is The Moon in the Well by Erica Helm Meade.  She has rewritten most of the stories, and after tracking down her sources I almost always prefer her version.  She includes what kinds of settings or audiences might be served by the story.  One of my favorite websites is The Internet Sacred Text Archive.  It’s organized by culture area and includes lots of public domain folktales from the 1800s and early 1900’s.  Let us know about your favorites in the comments.

Here’s another set of questions for you: are you a folktale tourist, a winter or summer visitor, or a resident.  There are some folktale traditions where I like to vacation, others where I stay a season, and others where I come as close as I can to being a resident-alien.  For example, I love to vacation in Jewish Folktales and I tell a few of them. My husband is Jewish, so I know a little about the culture.  I’ve done enough research and sought sufficient permissions that I feel responsible about the ones I tell regularly. I have wintered several times in Welsh folklore and myth, and learned quite a bit more about that tradition.  I’m close to becoming a resident-alien in Irish folklore, with one big failure on my part – I don’t speak or read Irish.  If I were ever to really “live” there, I’d have to overcome that.

             So, how about you? Where do you find your folktales? What’s your immigration status in your favorite tradition?  Tell us about it!