Folktales: treasures from unclaimed terrains
- Public Works
- Oct 13
- 2 min read
A folktale is shaped by many voices across time. They echo generations. Rarely written down, but remembered and retold. Never owned, but carried. A folktale is a story that lives in the oral tradition of a people, passed from mouth to ear, from elder to child, from stranger to another. It is shaped not by a single author but by the collective imagination of a community. And like all things born in the wild, folktales resist being contained.
They feature ordinary people, animals, spirits, moral dilemmas, and natural wonders. They carry the weight of local wisdom, shared fears, communal humour, and codes of survival. Folktales were used to share everyday wisdom, explain the inexplicable, and warn without scolding. They entertain with meaning. Traditionally transmitted through oral storytelling, later adapted into print and digital forms. Oral roots shape its rhythm, repetition, and memory-friendly structure.
A folktale is
• Mostly translated through oral origins, with growing print and digital transmission.
• Anonymous authorship, evolving with each retelling.
• Rooted in culture, shaped by rituals, beliefs, and the worldview of its people.
• Uses symbolism, using simple characters.
• Adaptable, changing slightly depending on who tells it and where.
• Voices vary, but gravitate towards overarching, all-knowing, genderless ones.
• More often detached from personal bias, folktale narrations usually observe, guiding listeners through the story while allowing the lesson to reveal itself. Sometimes, didactic lessons are brought in, directly judging.
"Folktale narration often takes the form of an omniscient, timeless voice; one that is neither male nor female, neither young nor old. Folktales usually use simple language, rhythmic structure, and moral lessons."
In cultures with strong oral heritage, folktales preserve history, tradition, and identity. They encode ancient knowledge, how to read the stars, how to listen to the wind, how to live in harmony with the land. They teach through metaphor, not instruction. Through wonder, not doctrine.
Folktales are mirrors of the collective psyche; unclaimed because they belong to no one storyteller. They allow people to process awe, fear, grief, longing, and love. They are the wild stories of shared terrains. And like the flowers that bloom without permission, they remind us that wonder, meaning, and truth often grow accessible, unclaimed, uncontained, but entirely necessary.
