Folk song
Singing of some kind is almost universal, and it is probable that where there are no reports of it the information is simply missing. Folk song implies the use of music, and the musical tradition varies greatly from one area to another. In some places the words of songs are of little importance and seem to be used primarily as support for the music. Frequently there are meaningless monosyllables and much repetition to accompany the voice or the musical instrument. In much of the world, drums and rattles, beating time by hands or feet, or the stroking of a harp give a strong rhythmic effect to folksinging. In other parts of the world, flutelike wind instruments or bowed fiddles of one kind or another affect the nature of folk song texts. In many places folk songs are of great importance, serving as excitement to war or love or as a part of religious or secular ritual. Through them the group expresses its common emotions or lightens the burden of communal labour. In certain preliterate groups and sometimes elsewhere, folk songs are used for magic effects, to defeat enemies, to attract lovers, to invoke the favour of the supernatural powers. Sometimes the magic effect of these songs is so greatly valued that actual ownership of songs is maintained and their use carefully guarded. They may come to the owner in a dream or as the result of fasting or other austerities.
Even when folk songs are not used for such practical purposes but only for the pleasure of singing or listening, the greater part of the world uses them for the expression of ideas or emotions held in common by the group. Only in societies used to the songs of composers or poets does purely personal expression enter into the folk song. This is not frequent, and songs of this type are hardly to be distinguished from some of the simple lyrics of poets such as Robert Burns. Folk songs, essentially expressions of commonly shared ideas or feelings, are often trivial but sometimes they may be profoundly moving.
The lyric folk song in one form or another is found almost everywhere, but this is not true of narrative singing. Unless the reporting of the activities of preliterate cultures has been very faulty, it would seem that the combination of song and story among these peoples has been rare, in spite of a wealth of prose narrative. On the other hand, in major Western and Asian civilizations the narrative song has been important for a long time and has been cultivated by the most skillful singers. In the course of time these songs of warfare, of adventure, or of domestic life have formed local cycles, such as the byliny of Russia or the heroic songs of many of the Balkan States and Finland or the ballad tradition of western Europe and elsewhere. Each of these cycles has its own characteristics, with its distinctive metrical forms, and its formulas both of events and expression. Any reader of the Homeric poems will be aware of their essentially oral and musical nature, and all the early literary narratives of Sumer and the Middle East suggest a long previous development of narrative singing.
Ballad
A special tradition of tales told in song has arisen in Europe since the Middle Ages and has been carried to wherever Europeans have settled. These ballads, in characteristic local metrical forms and frequently with archaic musical modes, are usually concerned with domestic or warlike conflict, with disasters by land or sea, with crime and punishment, with heroes and outlaws, and sometimes, though rarely, with humour. Despite a folk culture fast being overwhelmed by the modern world, these ballads are still sung and enjoyed. (For a more detailed treatment of this subject, see folk music.)
Folk drama
Belonging only remotely to oral literature is folk drama. Dances, many of them elaborate, with masks portraying animal or human characters, and sometimes containing speeches or songs, are to be found in many parts of the preliterate world. Though the action and the dramatic imitation is always the most prominent part of such performances, these may be part of a ritual and involve speaking or chanting of sacred texts learned and passed on by word of mouth.
The ancient Greek mysteries, as well as secret societies even down to the present, have retained this method of transmitting dramatically their traditions and their teachings and commentary. Some dramatic rituals indeed were not secret but part of a public cult. Thus in ancient Greece the feast of Dionysus led eventually to Classical Greek drama, and in the Middle Ages the dramatic celebrations of the Christian church developed into the medieval folk dramas and at long last into the literary drama of the Renaissance and later.
The medieval mummers’ plays and their modern survivals, the Passion plays, the Mexican reenactment of historic scenes such as “The Moors and the Christians,” and the modern pageants—all these are based on written texts, however crude, and are beyond the scope of this treatment (see also ritual and dramatic literature).
Fable
Fables, whether of the well-known Aesop cycle, with animals acting according to their real natures, or those from India, where animals simply act as men and women, are literary in origin. But they have had an important influence on folk literature. In addition to appearing in written collections, a number of these are told by storytellers in many parts of the world. Such fables as “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” with appropriate morals, have been frequently recorded along with oral tales and have undoubtedly served as models for new animal stories. Sometimes these new tales have eventually received literary treatment, as in the medieval “Reynard the Fox,” and then been carried back around the world by storytellers. In such narratives the borderline between folk literature and other literary expression is impossible to draw.