Folklore: Types, Examples & How Writers Use It
Folklore is the body of stories, beliefs, customs, and traditions passed down through generations — usually orally — within a community. It includes myths, legends, fairy tales, fables, folk songs, proverbs, and rituals. Folklore is how cultures make sense of the world before (and alongside) written literature.
For writers, folklore is an inexhaustible source of story patterns, archetypes, and imagery. Every novel you've ever read about a hero's quest, a trickster, or a deal with the devil is drawing — whether consciously or not — on thousands of years of folk tradition.
Folklore vs. Literature
Folklore is communal and oral — it belongs to no single author and changes with every telling. Literature is fixed and authored — one person's vision committed to text. The boundary between them is blurry: Homer's Iliad began as oral folklore and became foundational literature.
Myths
Sacred stories that explain the origin of the world, natural phenomena, or a culture's deepest beliefs. Myths involve gods, creation, and cosmic forces.
- —The Creation of the World (Norse) — The gods kill the primordial giant Ymir and fashion the earth from his body — mountains from his bones, oceans from his blood, sky from his skull.
- —Prometheus and Fire (Greek) — A Titan steals fire from Olympus to give humanity knowledge and warmth, and pays with eternal punishment.
- —The Dreaming (Aboriginal Australian) — Ancestral beings shaped the land, animals, and laws during the Dreaming — a time that is both past and eternally present.
- —Izanagi and Izanami (Japanese (Shinto)) — Two divine siblings stir the primordial ocean with a jeweled spear, and the drops that fall become the islands of Japan.
Legends
Stories set in the historical past that may have a kernel of truth but have been embellished through retelling. Legends feature human heroes rather than gods.
- —King Arthur and the Round Table (British) — A once and future king, a magical sword, a doomed love triangle — possibly rooted in a real Romano-British war leader.
- —Robin Hood (English) — An outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. The legend has accreted stories for 700 years.
- —Sundiata Keita (West African (Mandinka)) — The crippled prince who rose to found the Mali Empire — told by griots for eight centuries.
- —Mulan (Chinese) — A young woman who disguises herself as a man to fight in her aging father's place. First recorded in a 6th-century ballad.
Fairy Tales
Fictional stories featuring magical elements — enchantments, talking animals, transformations — that follow a moral arc. Originally oral, later collected and published.
- —Cinderella (Global (earliest known: Chinese, 9th century)) — The mistreated stepdaughter who rises through magical intervention. Over 700 variants exist worldwide.
- —Baba Yaga (Slavic) — A witch who lives in a hut on chicken legs in the deep forest. She tests travelers — help the worthy, devour the foolish.
- —Anansi the Spider (West African / Caribbean) — A trickster spider who outwits larger, stronger creatures through cunning. He is also the keeper of all stories.
- —The Snow Queen (Danish (Hans Christian Andersen)) — A splinter of a demon's mirror lodges in a boy's heart, turning him cold. His friend Gerda journeys to the ends of the earth to save him.
Fables
Short, didactic stories — usually featuring animals — that end with a clear moral lesson. Brevity is the defining feature.
- —The Tortoise and the Hare (Greek (Aesop)) — Slow and steady wins the race. Perhaps the most widely known fable in the Western world.
- —The Boy Who Cried Wolf (Greek (Aesop)) — A shepherd boy lies about wolves so often that when a real wolf appears, no one believes him.
- —The Panchatantra Tales (Indian) — A collection of animal fables composed around 300 BCE to teach princes the art of statecraft and survival.
- —The Monkey and the Crocodile (Indian (Jataka Tales)) — A monkey outwits a crocodile who wants to eat his heart. Cleverness defeats brute strength.
Folk Songs & Ballads
Stories told through music, passed down orally and adapted by each generation of singers. They preserve history, emotion, and community identity.
- —Barbara Allen (Scottish / English) — A ballad about unrequited love and death that has been collected in over 100 versions across the English-speaking world.
- —John Henry (African American) — A steel-driving man races a steam drill and wins — but dies from the effort. A folk hero of strength and resistance to mechanization.
- —Greensleeves (English) — A 16th-century love song whose authorship is unknown. The tune has been adapted continuously for 500 years.
- —Arirang (Korean) — A folk song so central to Korean identity that it exists in thousands of regional variations and is recognized by UNESCO.
How Modern Writers Use Folklore
Retelling and reimagining
Madeline Miller's Circe retells Greek myth from a minor character's perspective. Neil Gaiman's American Gods transplants old-world deities into modern America. Retellings work because folklore provides a story skeleton the reader already knows — freeing the writer to focus on voice, character depth, and thematic reinterpretation.
Borrowing structures and archetypes
The hero's journey, the trickster, the wise mentor, the forbidden door — these patterns originate in folklore and appear in everything from Star Wars to The Hunger Games. You don't need to retell a specific folk tale to use its structures. Understanding folklore gives you access to narrative patterns that resonate across cultures.
Building fictional cultures
Fantasy and science fiction writers create folklore for their invented worlds — origin myths, proverbs, songs, and superstitions that make a culture feel lived-in. Tolkien's Middle-earth feels real partly because it has its own folklore layered beneath the main narrative. Your fictional cultures will feel deeper if they have stories they tell themselves.
Researching responsibly
When drawing on folklore from cultures other than your own, research deeply and respectfully. Understand the context: some stories are sacred, some are communal property, and some have been distorted by colonial collectors. Read scholarship by people from within the tradition, not just anthologies compiled by outsiders.
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