Folklore (Outside Reading, Elizabeth White)

  In a mythology course I took at UNC Asheville, we learned that folklore and fairytales were often passed down by women while they did laundry. They held messages of the dangers of the real world with horrific themes and horrible endings to warn their daughters and fellow women of the horrors of the world. The story of Persephone, in Greek mythology, is likely one such tale. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the story of Demeter’s daughter being promised in marriage against her will to a much older man and then being kidnapped and stolen from her. It is about Demeter’s grief and in this version of the story, it is easy to see how it could be a story that mothers give their daughters to explain how marriage works in a world where they often have so little choice in the matter. I read Paul Cowdell’s article, “‘Practicing Witchcraft Myself During the Filming’: Folk Horror, Folklore, and the Folkloresque.” He discusses the film subgenre of folk horror, its origins, and its development in recent years. Cowdell writes that modern folklore films seek to emphasize the things in our world that still exist as pagan, instead of Christian. These films frame the pagan as horror, but historically, the genre likely surfaced as a response to the Neo-Pagan spirituality movements of the 1960s. It is an interesting intersection of religion and film and I believe that folklore has a unique place in spiritual discussions. The warnings told by women doing laundry have become bright fairy tales in the modern day, but tell us something about how our view of these subjects has changed throughout history. 

Cowdell, Paul. “‘Practicing Witchcraft Myself During the Filming’: Folk Horror, Folklore, and the Folkloresque.” Western Folklore 78, no. 4 (2019): 295–326. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26864166.