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American folklore

All people of the world are known to possess two types of literature: written and oral. Written literature consists of the material that appears in books and read by persons of some education. Oral literature is made up of the material that men and women pass to each other by word of mouth generation after generation.

Among primitive tribes all the literature is oral. In a society such as that of 21^st century America, most of the literature is written down, although there are many songs, tales, legends, games, rimes, jokes, proverbs, riddles, and superstitions that people learn from their parents, grandparents, and friends, that they don’t write down. This is the folklore of a modern, civilized nation – and it is obvious that the less schooling a person has the more likely he is to preserve what he knows of oral literature, even the most highly educated men will recall some folklore.

All nations have rich folk heritages, and America offers no exception. During the last years the United States has shown a steadily increasing interest in what is a vanishing cultural heritage. American collectors have worked hard to uncover and preserve as much of the national folklore as possible before it is all forgotten. Today, most of the rich and varied folklore of the United States is recorded in books, on records, and in library archives. Publishers edit and mass distribute it, schools and colleges teach and analyze it, and writers develop and embellish it.

The list of folk-songs types in the United States includes three kinds of Anglo-American narrative songs or ballads, the Spanish narrative corridor, dance and game lyrics, Negro blues, spirituals, work songs, Indian chants and prayers, and the various European and British love lyrics. A list of folktales includes trickster tales of the Negro and the Indian, tales of the French and Spanish, local legends concerning ghosts, place names, and geographical features of all sorts, tall tales, primitive Indian myths, and European stories.

For example, the founding of the United States itself is surrounded by legends and tall tales. Many stories have developed since the founding long ago to become a part of America's folklore and cultural awareness, and non-native American folklore especially includes any narrative which has contributed to the shaping of American values and belief systems. These narratives may be true and may be false; the veracity of the stories is not a determining factor. All of you know so-called ‘founding myths’ about Christopher Columbus.

Though Christopher Columbus did not participate in the founding of the American government, he has been interpreted as a ‘founder’ of the American nation, in that it is descended from the European immigrants who would not have moved to the New World if Columbus had not found where it was. Indeed, one particularly pervasive story is that Columbus discovered America, as it is far easier to elevate a man to heroic status than to reflect the reality among complex series of waves of immigrants from multiple conditions and walks of life. According to some stories, Columbus began his journey across the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, August 3, 1492, in order to prove that the world was round, because he expected to reach the Far East by sailing west. Like most legendary ‘founders’ Columbus' mission is then rendered entirely noble, intellectual and rational. He helped dispel the inaccurate beliefs of his time, and, so, it is concluded, the nation he founded must be a nation of intellect and logic.