Heritage and Folklore

Yesterday's presentation of Celtic stories, folklore and ballads went very well. The audience was engaged and full of questions and comments; they came early and stayed after to talk. It was a real pleasure to be there and to share the magic and mystery of the stories and folklore that call to the heritage of many in this region.

Something that struck me as I was preparing for this program is that here in the US we have a lack of something that I believe is important to any culture.  Almost everywhere else in the world one will find a depth of folklore, of myths and legends and superstitions that often trace so far back the origins are unable to be determined. Think of the Nordic myths, the portal tombs and runes of Ireland and other countries,

the stone circles and other large stone structures

found all over the world. Consider the stories of the Green Man, the legend of the Green Knight, Beowulf and others. There are fairies and other otherworldly creatures in the folklore of many countries, and warnings and superstitions about all manner of things.

Most of us here in the US are imports, immigrants who may have arrived as long ago as 200+ years or maybe last year. Few can claim native heritage here, and those who have native blood very likely have intermarriages in their family trees so there are probably only a few thousand who can claim to be "pure" Native American.

The ancient folklore and culture of this land belong to the Native Americans, not to the "come-heres". The native lore and storytelling is deep and rich and fascinating, but it is not ours--the immigrants--to claim.

Certainly we've developed a few folk heroes: Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, Pecos Bill, John Henry and a few others come to mind. In the Appalachian region where I live, the early settlers transplanted their folkore and superstitions with their families, and those traditions continued to thrive for many years, although the homogenizing effects of television and mass media are quickly diluting it. Other regions of our country did the same--the New Englanders, for example. In the Southwest the culture of the region was absorbed to a large degree by the settlers there, but that region is in many respects only recently settled compared to rest of the US.  There are probably other examples--the Danish/Norwegian heritage of the northern Plains states comes to mind.

But in all these cases, the culture is from some other place, and not unique to those of us called "American." We've borrowed, absorbed, revised, and in some cases just created something new (thinking of the West Virginia stories about Tony Beaver).

I wonder if this lack of a unifying past, a common heritage of certain myths and mores passed down for centuries and instilled in our collective memories by generations of storytellers, is not part of the underlying issues of our country. We can't look at each other and know that each of us has heard those old stories and superstitions. I suppose one could say that the Christian religion is our unifier, but not all who came here share that belief system--and it too is inherited from European roots.

I think this is why when I visited Ireland, England and Wales, I felt a rush of recognition and groundedness, an attachment to places I had never seen before. My English mother instilled many traditions and superstitions in me, probably without even realizing she did so--it was just part of who she was, not something she consciously did. I felt something similar when I came to West Virginia, and I now know that that feeling of roots sinking in was because so much of the culture here included the culture of my mother and my father's Irish heritage.

As people trace their family trees and do the DNA tests to discover their roots, many are developing a stronger interest in the cultures that made them. We may not have a common heritage, but by finding our history, we find our stories. Stories have always been the way cultures pass down their mores and morals, the way they form their concepts of good and bad, sacred and evil, and preserve their history. Stories are what bind a people together.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.