| Folklore has existed ever since people have lived in groups, told tales, sung, danced, created artifacts, and had common ways of doing things. The word folklore, however, was not coined until 1846possibly as a result of the interest in "popular antiquities" spurred by the publication, in Germany, of the Grimm brothers' collections of fairy tales, legends, and myths (18151835). In the United States the systematic study of folklore dates from the last two decades of the nineteenth century, when Francis J. Child, a professor of literature at Harvard, published his five-volume collection, English and Scottish Popular Ballads (18831898), and the American Folklore Society was founded, with the Journal of American Folklore as its official organ (1888). |
| Because it tells us something about almost every aspect of the life of the people, the study of folklore takes many forms and contributes to a host of disciplines, among them philology, comparative literature, psychology, history, sociology, anthropology, religion, philosophy, and the fine arts. Not surprisingly, with so many fields of study involved, there is a good deal of disagreement on precisely what folklore is and how it may be defined. But the problems and disputes of scholars will not be considered here. A Treasury of Nebraska Pioneer Folklore is intended first and foremost for the general readerin particular, the people of Nebraska, whose heritage it isand it is to be enjoyed rather than studied. |
| My object in this introduction is simply to give a brief account of folkloristic activity in Nebraska, incorporating a few pertinent observations on the nature of folklore, and to describe the sources from which the present collection has been compiled. For the benefit of the reader who wants to skip the introduction and get straight to the text, the following is offered as a |
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