Folktales: The Importance Of Folk Tales?

What is folk tales?

A folktale is a type of traditional story that tries to explain a story element attached to the common folk or which teaches some good to help people behave well in the world. “Such stories usually are fiction - based with magical or supernatural elements, and they often are woven around talking animals, royalty, peasants or mythical creatures. Initially passed down through oral tradition, they were a major means of educating people and were also a means of entertaining people prior to the development of printed materials and modern technologies” (www.wisegees.org, 2014). Folk tales have remained instrumental in preserving the culture in which they had developed.

Main Characteristics

Stories that fall into the

Further, people needed ways to preserve their cultures. Folktales met all these needs, providing long-lasting lessons.

Authorship

With oral tradition carrying these folktales from generation to generation and place to place, tracing an original author is difficult. “Most of the time, they are labeled either as "anonymous" or "traditional," but occasionally, specific versions sometimes have attributions that note the person or group of people who wrote down or preserved, which helps keep the different arrangements of the same stories straight” (www.wisegees.org, 2014)

Importance of Folk Tales A folk tale has an important role in knowledge transfer and personality development. It also has power to influence a person’s perception, attitude, behavior, and many other factors important to human’s life as well as the society.

Folk tales help people to better understand general conditions of human since folk tales are sources of constructed perceptions, beliefs, paradigm, fear, fun, formality, and others. Folk tales are implicitly regarded as a boundary

Polygamy is neither a sin nor a social taboo with the Irulas. The story’s message is clear; the boy was good, generous, hard working, and also shrewd. Luck and success are with the offspring who is either unwanted or seemingly unworthy; ungratefulness and evil plotting are punished. (Zvelebil, 1973).

A Widow’s Clever Son

A fairy tale more complex but also much more charming is the story of a widow’s clever son. A widow worked for daily wages that were the exact equivalent of one measure of millet flour. She made ‘dosas’ and fed herself and her son. One day, while she went to fetch water, a beggar came to the village and the poor widow’s son gave him the two dosas as alms. When the mother returned, there was nothing to eat, but the boy said that since she always taught him that by giving alms one earns merit, he shall go that day itself to see God and ask him for boon.

And he went. On his way, he stretched out under a mango tree that was full of fruits, but they were unripe, and no one, not even a bird or a monkey, could eat them. The boy was hungry. When the boy complained that the tree could not throw even a single fruit to him, the tree answered that its fruits never ripen. The boy told the tree that he was going to see God and ask for boons, and he will ask God what was wrong with the tree. And he