Women's Folklore

It has become something of a truism in folklore studies that until recently the lore was more often studied than the folk. That is, folklorists concentrated on the folklore—the songs, tales, and proverbs themselves—and ignored the people who transmitted that lore as part of their oral culture. However, since the early 1970s, This shift of emphasis has also encouraged a growing interest in women folk performers.

Until recently, folklorists tended to collect folklore from women on only a few topics such as health and games. In other areas, as Weigle and Farrer have noted, if folklorists “had a choice between a story as told by a man or as told by a woman, the man’s version was chosen.” little attention to women and their folklore, this book devotes many pages to women folk performers.

Recognition of women as important bearers of folklore is not entirely a recent phenomenon. As early as 1903, a few outstanding women folk performers were the focus of scholarly attention. But the scholarship devoted to these women tended to focus primarily on presenting the performer’s repertoire. Recent works about women folk artists, of noted ballad singer Almeda Riddle. Unfortunately, unlike Pentikäinen’s study, Abraham’s study contains little repertoire analysis.

These recent books reflect the current interest of folklorists in viewing folklore in context and thus answering questions about what folklore means to the people who use it. One unexpected result of this line of study has been the discovery that women may use the same folklore that men use, but for a folklorist wants truly to understand the role folklore plays in a particular culture.