Folklore
The wise fool: the character who is right for the wrong reasons
A figure who appears foolish and turns out to have made a point runs through folk traditions across a very wide area, and the stories are frequently sharper than they look.
Topic
folklore
Every Kohopoho article tagged folklore — 5 pieces across 1 section.
Folklore
People who become animals: transformation stories and what they carry
Seal-wives, bear-husbands, fox-spirits and shape-changers appear across unconnected traditions, and the stories are usually about the boundary between the household and everything outside it.
Folklore
Haunted geography: why ghost stories attach to specific places
The distribution of ghost stories across a landscape is not random. They cluster on boundaries, crossings, and places where something happened that a community needed to keep talking about.
Folklore
Changeling stories and what they were really about
Tales of a child swapped for something else appear across northern Europe and beyond. Reading them as explanations rather than as fantasy makes them considerably darker and more useful.
Folklore
The trickster: the figure who turns up everywhere and breaks the rules
Spider, coyote, hare, raven, fox, a wandering fool. Traditions with no contact produced characters who share a job, and the job tells you something about what stories are for.