Folklore: An Introduction to History, Art & Literature

F is for Fishermans Luck Fairy Tales ABCs McLoughlin Brothers, 1870s

Folklore: An Introduction to History, Art & Literature Childrens literature, fairy tales and folklore have their origins in the medieval dark ages when the masses, adults and children alike, were illiterate compared to a relatively small group of ruling elite. Although official history as told by various conquerors reflects the development of trade routes and weapons to defend those trade routes, folklore by contrast is history told by common folk. It has deep roots in public education at a time when superstition was rampant. As we shall see, there are legitimate reasons why this genre of wizards, witches, warlocks and elves has endured through the ages. The above image, for instance, is how the illiterate were taught to read. What is more, according to Nietzsche, folklore is the happy medium between communicating with the use of images and communication that does not use images, such as music. (1). Nietzsche makes this a distinction bexii

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tween Apollonian and Dionysian art consecutively, both names of Greek gods. History prior to the development of the printing press is classified by ages: the stone age, bronze age & iron age, the golden age of enlightenment during the 5th century, the dark ages of the medieval period, followed by the Renaissance of the 14-16th centuries. The European Renaissance was a revival of 5th century ideals with a new twist; the development of the printing press and literacy for the masses. This was followed by the industrial age to what may be currently described as the information age, or the technological revolution due to the internet. As with the technological revolution, the development of the printing press was responsible for disseminating large amounts of information and education to the masses unprecedented in history. The development of trade routes and increasingly sophisticated weapons beginning with stone and iron to defend those routes, the invention of the printing press and the internet combined have created a global system of world trade and a global education for children as well. Many forks in the road occurred between official history, art and literature and that of the common folk as they gained skills in literacy. Well highlight some of those forks in the road, the schools of thought and art movements, their impact upon the common folk and how the folk impacted art. This book may be considered a form of folklore and folk art. We hope it will provide inspiration to the elementary artist and the child, as the Renaissance did to the newly literate masses. In some ways certain ages of antiquity were socially and artistically superior to our modern corporate culture. In a world without newspapers or books, there was a certain liveliness to the social climate of the first century we might find lacking

on Main Street today. Dion Chrysostrom, who lived in 70 A.D. gives an account of city life in his day:

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One may see in all the crowd and cram and crush everyone calmly doing his own business; the piper piping and teaching to pipe often in the streets with his pupils, while the crowd passes by and does not interfere with him; the trainer producing his dancers for a stage play without noticing a few fights going on; most remarkable of all, schoolmasters sit in the streets with their boys, teaching or learning for all that multitudinous mob. I myself saw people doing all sorts of things there, piping, dancing, one giving a show, one reciting a poem, one singing, one reading a story or fable, and not one of them preventing anyone else from his own particular business. (2) As in the first century described above, and the golden age of the fifth century as well (during which time lived Socrates and Confucius), education and literature during the medieval dark ages of the 12-13th centuries were reserved for the wealthy elite and the masses were by comparison ignorant. Books were handwritten and too expensive to produce on a scale large enough to educate the masses. They were often bound in animal skin called vellum and written in Latin. Wealthy patrons hired artists to produce illustrated books of devotional material called illuminated manuscripts. The most famous of these is The Book of Hours produced by the three Limbourg brothers for the Duke of Berry. These artists were

later commissioned to illustrate a Bible. All three brothers died during the bubonic plague. The plague was believed by some to be a punishment from God and was used by the Church to lead their followers to repentance. One example of a later version of an illuminated manuscript for children is found at the beginning of this introduction, Fairytale ABCs by the McLoughlin brothers. The

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cost of an original illuminated manuscript today ranges from the hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cost of the graphic at the beginning of this introduction is in the public domain due to copyright expiration and such images can be purchased for only a few dollars. Patrons of the arts were especially fond of having themselves portrayed in the company of saints in their illuminated manuscripts. Perhaps their love of saints was due to the fact that the only literate class besides themselves were priests. Another possible rationale, given the special emphasis on art during this time period is that their devotion and patronage of the arts earned them a special place in heaven. After all, even the great banking family, the Medicis, fostered art, as well as many Popes. The European Renaissance which followed the medieval dark ages is a commonly accepted starting point from which to examine the masses so-called emergence from the darkness of ignorance and superstition to the enlightenment of education and the hope of social, economic and political mobility by the underclasses that came with it. It begins with the proto-Renaissance (pre-Renaissance) of the 12 -13th centuries, followed by the Renaissance of the 14-15th centuries, reaching its peak during the High Renaissance of the 16th century when Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. With the development of the printing press in Germany in 1440, the first Bible was mass-produced called the Gutenberg Bible. During this same time period, Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church and the Protestant religion emerged. As the Protestant church moved in the direction of humanism, fewer angels were depicted in religious art. Catholic Michelangelo, however, did not waiver from his belief in angels, nor his apparent belief in God as a source of inspiration, clearly depicted in his masterpiece Creation of Adam. But his contemporary, Raphael, pursued yet another school of thought; philosophy, which was a neo-Platonic revival of
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the fifth century Golden Age. This marked a significant fork in the road between official art sponsored by the government, religious art sponsored by the churches, and the landscape genre which was to come soon after. Some schools of thought practiced bringing order out of chaos as a form of idealism, while others advocated realism. In a charming example of the abhorrence for chaos written in the 1700s, a French Catholic missionary describes Niagara Falls as: falling from a horrible precipice, foaming and boiling after the most hideous manner imaginable, and making an outrageous noise and dismal roaring, more terrible than thunder. (3) Such irreverence for nature would be unthinkable to those artists producing the landscape genre a short while later but travel literature had emerged with the development of the printing press, and this piece was feasibly written to entertain an audience back home in France. Proto-Renaissance art progressed from flat surfaced, onedimensional paintings and sculpture to multi-dimensional works of art that included weather and atmosphere, light, shadows, perspective, gestures, and the folds of drapery. Even sculpture advanced to portraying the folds of drapery in marble. Some were offended by the attempts to portray divinity in art altogether and the iconoclast movement began as the Protestants moved toward humanism. Catholicism and Protestantism continued to use imagery to gain as yet illiterate converts and eventually both churches sought new converts in the Americas during a time period called the Counter-Revolution; thus Europe brought its unresolved conflicts to the new world. America was viewed by the European immigrants as the promised land and a restored Garden of Eden, but not for the Indians, who were subject to a genocide that reduced their population by more than a million people. These indigenous hunting and gathering societies were converted to cattle ranching and farming. As with the bubonic
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plague, rats brought new diseases to the indigenous populations who were without prior exposure or immunity. The sacred texts of the indigenous populations were burned. The temples of the South American Incas, Aztecs and Mayans were superimposed with Western architecture and Christian churches were built upon the very ruins of the temples of the conquered tribes. Architecture is an art. In its ideal form, architecture attracts business and tourism to the city of God, parishioners in the case of churches, and hospitals in the case of the Bubonic plague (4). It also symbolizes mans conquest over nature. Meanwhile in the East, China, Japan and Korea, found a happy medium in geometrical architecture surrounded by asymmetrical gardens and landscapes. Unfortunately, an in-depth study of Eastern art is outside the scope of this work. In fact, the earliest origins of the printing press are found in China and Korea, but our focus here is on the Western Renaissance. All great artists travelled to Italy. The city of Florence was a haven to which artists of every sort fled. During his pilgrimage across the mountains to Italy, Piter Bregel the Elder developed the landscape genre. He later merged his art with literary proverbs and another technique for educating the illiterate masses with images and morals was born. This work was called The Netherlandish Proverbs. In this piece, village peasants are engaged in a variety of proverbial activity associated with the underclass as perceived by the elite, such as one man beating his head against a wall. Our variation of this is called A Montage of Proverbs, and it is found on the last page of this introduction. In his mastery of the landscape genre, Bregel used nature as the greater backdrop and humanity as the lessor subject matter in the forefront, creating the effect that man is subject to nature and not the other way around. This created a popular worldupside-down debate at the time and there remains some question amongst scholars as to whose side Bregel was on, the peasantry or the elite. (5) The elite had counter-acted with an art
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movement of their own to keep the poor peasants in their place. To the elite, order meant obedience by the peasantry. They contributed to stereotyping the lower classes and thwarting their upward mobility with images of war heroes, villains, shepherds, farmers and fools. Hogenberg and Ewout Muller of Amsterdam portrayed the activities of the peasantry and their heroic efforts to overcome their lot as foolish and subversive. (6) A popular theme that emerged was virtue versus folly. The peasantry sought

to eliminate the stereotypes the elite had caste upon them by creating the folklore genre artist as hero, and the elite as fraudulent villains. Folklore aimed at an egalitarian ethos (7)
and some scholars now view folklore as the social and unofficial history of the peasantry in their conflicts with the elite. (8) Meanwhile, Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus challenged the Latin translation of the Bible, restored it to Greek, criticized the folly of the church and art altogether, and attempted to reform monks who were fond of wine, women and song and loathe to work. Folklore triumphed as a literary genre in the 1800s. Queen Elizabeth I implemented the public school during the Protestant Reformation so the poor peasants might have as good an education as she did. By now the common folk could read and write. Hans Christian Anderson produced The Ugly Duckling, famous for its underlying message of the artist as social outcast until he is reunited with his true family of swans. Additionally he produced The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina, and The Little Mermaid. The Grimms brothers produced Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and others, until they were exiled from the Kingdom of Hanover for putting up a resistance to royal absolutism. The Berlin Academy of Sciences took them under their umbrella so they could produce a dictionary. (9) Since Socrates and Plato, childrens literature has never been without its social radicals and revolutionaries. Early indications of folk lore are found in The Piper of Hamelin. The legend behind the Pied Piper is that a man hired himself to
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rid Hamelin of rats and when he was not paid for his work, he lured children from the village who were enchanted by his flute. Rats and lice are attributed to the cause of the Bubonic plague in 1347-1348 which eliminated 50% of Europes population. Factual support for the disappearance of numerous children is found in the 15th century Luenenberg manuscript which reads: In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on 26 June, 130 children born in Hamelin (Hameln, Germany) were seduced by a piper dressed in all kinds of colors and lost at the place of execution near the koppen. (10) It is said that the childhood song ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down was written about a village that had to be burned to the ground due to the plague. In Discovering the Global Past, author Merry Weisner suggests that the rhyme was intended to make certain future generations never forgot the plague (11). There are those who dispute this, claiming the limerick was written in the 18th century. Many great artists died during the plague, including Ambrosio Lorenzetti, famous for his masterpieces, The Effects of Good Government and The Effects of Bad Government. Many nursery rhymes and fairy tales are believed to have been written about actual historical events. Mary, Mary, quite contrary is said to have been written about Mary, Queen of Scots, Catholic, cousin to Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Mary Queen of Scots was convicted of treason for plotting to overthrow her cousin. The Emperors New Clothes by the brothers Grimm is said to have been written about Julius Caesar because Rome was then seen as a naked tyranny. According to child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the genie in the bottle originated from a German-Swiss doctor named Theophrastus Bombastus , the first doctor to put medicine in bottles. (12) The earliest printed version of Little Red Cape (Little Red Riding Hood) Is Charles Perraults 1697 version. Perrault was one of the
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first folk tale authors, next to Aesop, to draw from classical Greek literature and state an explicit moral at the end of the story: Children, especially attractive, well-bread young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say wolf but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all. (13) Walter Crane created a wood-cut illustration for Little Red Cape (wood cuts were originally used for printing) and went on to both write and illustrate numerous folk tales including Sing A Song of Sixpence and One, Two, Buckle my Shoe. He added another quality to educating the illiterate he made learning fun. Another wellknown trick of the trade that developed was to eliminate adult intervention as far as possible, and allow children to discover creative solutions to difficult challenges on their own. Hansel and Gretel, for instance, provides visual imagery of a childlike sense of abandonment. In spite of the fear factor, children are enchanted and filled with admiration at Hansels clever use of bread-crumbs and stones to trace his path home. Folk tales as art are external representations of internal psychological processes. They are often placed in pastoral settings with town-weary folk as celebrities, are larger than life, and represent struggles to overcome difficult circumstances. They are rife with social, political and economical absurdities which children relish. Witches, warlocks and ogres represent real dangers in the world, hostile forces , prejudices and obstacles which one must overcome to fulfill a goal. Identifying which forces are real and which are fictitious develops courage (14). Then as now, to many adults these figures are mere superstition, but to others they are very real, thus the controversy surrounding J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter and
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the Sorcerers Stone. The moral at the end of folklore suggests if nothing else that there is something to be learned from reading, and, of course, this technique was another tool used by the church to both educate and teach the newly literate morals. Shortly after the development of the printing press, however, publishing companies began printing the best classical books at very inexpensive prices. (15) A great deal of original material was lost in these translations, including translations of the Bible. The most famous work of art resulting from a Biblical mistranslation is Michelangelos Moses. The marble sculpture depicts Moses descending from Mount Sinai with two horns on his head, resembling a devil, rather than two rays of light emanating from his head, as described in the original translation. (16) Hogenberg and Ewout Muller were correct; the innovations of the lower classes did indeed result in great folly at times. Nevertheless the remarkable advances made in art , literature, and the quality of life for the underclasses compensated for it. It had always been the goal of the Catholic church, Michelangelo especially, to prove the existence of God. The flat-surfaced, one-dimensional paintings of the proto-Renaissance were now multi-dimensional, and artists had indeed proven that there is more than meets the eye. This achievement of Renaissance artists may be compared to the recognition that a square has multiple dimensions in the form of a cube, rather than one. Literature is perceived as one-dimensional art, that is text on paper, but literature also uses literary images to demonstrate there is more than meets the eye. These images are most notably found in the Bible. Iconoclasts have not objected to this form of imagery, however, to any degree close to their objections to the portrayal of divinity in art . It may in fact be the hidden meaning, that which is not seen, that which is not spelled out, the second or third dimension, the ideal rather than the real, the symbols and the imagination that engage children to fairy tales and folk lore. Symbolism has always
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played a large role in art and although I have not discussed it here, I have included a list of commonly recognized symbols at the back of this book. A forest symbolizes a place of testing, for example. Crossing a bridge symbolizes making a transition. A cube symbolizes the end of a cycle of immobility. Once upon a time, long, long ago, I learned to read fairy tales and I decided I wanted to be a fairy-tale writer when I grew up. Once again, I have to say Hogenberg and Ewout Muller were right. Great folly has been committed in this pursuit, not the least of which is directly related to ignorance about mathematics and the unyielding specifications of the printing press. Ive actually awaken from a nightmare where columns of text were pillars of Roman architecture in symbol. It behooves the budding author, then, to learn a bit about the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the commercial printing press, lest midway through the process one is facing the ghost of Erasmus and his admonishments for playing with complex questions, and second childhoods. (17) It is entirely feasible that a whole new genre of horror stories can be written on this subject matter alone. I studied a bit of art in college and Id like to study it further. A great deal of my study on the folk genre has been supplemented by independent study. There is at least one fact I feel I can authoritatively conclude about the genre: a child who grows up in the company of Kings & Queens, Princes & Princesses, paupers & fools, has a greater likelihood of pursuing a higher education and learning about monarchies, Queen Elizabeth I, public education versus private Catholic schools, The French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Native American Indian holocaust, The American Constitution, and so on. Ideally, I hope to inspire the same love of learning that was instilled in me when I learned to read, either by studying independently or pursuing a formal education. Indeed, the Public Library opened in 1571 courtesy of the Medici family of Florence that all might have access to learning via independent study.
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There is a vast field of treasure in medieval history for adults and children alike, far more than is within the scope of this work. Tutorials for the proper public behavior of Princes, as well as table manners for Princesses were written during this period. Work considered pagan, such as the fables of Aesop, were gradually shunned as well as works considered too moralizing. (18) These works retain great value for their insights into the life and times of the characters who graced their pages and the celebration of human achievement that is the humanities. In retrospect to my childhood, I cannot recall an educational bridge between fairy-tales, folklore, and real history. I hope this book provides an elementary bridge. ~Deborah Khora~

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A Montage of Proverbs

From top left to bottom right: Let sleeping dogs lie, laughter is the best medicine, money talks, dont cry over spilled milk, youll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

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End Notes

(1) Benton, Janetta Rebold, Arts & Culture, ( Saddle River, Pearson Education, Inc., 2008), pg. 288. (2) Graves-Rouse, John Clive, Great Dialogues of Plato, (N.Y., The New American Library of World Lit.., Inc., 1956), pg. 7. (3) Artz, Frederick B., From the Renaissance to Romanticism, (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1962), pg. 164. (4) Kleiner, Fred S., Gardners Art Through the Ages, (Boston, Thomson Higher Education, 2009), pg. 502. (5) Kunzle, David, Bruegels Proverb Painting and the World Upside Down, (Art Bulletine, June 77, vol. 59, Issue 2), pg. 202. (6) ibid, pg. 201. (7) Perrie, Maureen, Folklore as Evidence of Peasant Mentalitie: Social Attitudes and Values in Russian Popular Culture, (The Russian Review, 1989, vol. 48, No. 2), pg. 127. (8) ibid, pg. 119. (9) Damrosh, David, The Longman Anthology, World Literature, vol. D, (N.Y., Pearson Education, Inc., 2009), pg. 192. (10) Rerez-Cuervo, Maria, J., The Lost Children of Hamelin, Retrieved on Dec. 31, 2011, www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3805/ the_lost_children_of_hamelin.html. (11) Weisner, Merry, Discovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evidence, (Boston, Houghlin Mifflin Co., 2007), pg. 379. (12) Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment, (N.Y., Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), pg. 316. (13) Ashliman, D.L., Charles Perraults Mother Goose Tales, Retrieved on Dec. 31, 2011, www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault02.html. (14) Sterling & Scott, Plato: The Republic, (N.Y., W.W. Norton & Co., 1985), p.p. 128-136. (15) Flemming, William, Arts & Ideas, (N.Y., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 3rd Ed.), pg. 292. (16) ibid, pg. 271. (17) Erasmus, Desiderus, The Praise of Folly, Retrieved on Dec. 31, 2011, www.information.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/ etexts05/7efly10.htm. (18) Kline, Daniel, Medieval Literature for Children, (N.Y., Routledge, 2003), pp.1-10.

Author Deborah Khora is currently pursuing an Associates Degree in Arts & Humanities and Behavioral & Social Sciences at Folsom Lake College in California. For information on how to create your own book, visit deborahkhora.blogspot.com

Illustrator Karen Hunziker currently exhibits her work at Gold Country Artists Gallery in Placerville, California, and her home studio, The Secret Headquarters, in Pollock Pines, California.

The Secret Headquarters Art Studio P.O. Box 684 Pollock Pines, CA, 95726 (530) 644-4858