Folklore is the collection of traditional stories, beliefs, customs, and sayings that people pass down through generations, usually by telling them out loud rather than writing them down. Every culture has its own folklore: the fairy tales grandparents tell, the legends about local heroes, the superstitions about black cats or four-leaf clovers, and the songs children sing during games.

Folklore belongs to everyone in a community, not to one author or creator. Nobody knows who first told the story of Cinderella or invented the legend of Bigfoot; these tales spread from person to person, changing slightly each time someone retells them.

Folklore includes ghost stories told around campfires, jump-rope rhymes, holiday traditions, and beliefs about what brings good or bad luck. Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe are American folklore. The Greek myths about gods and heroes started as folklore before people eventually wrote them down. Even modern urban legends, like stories about alligators in city sewers, count as folklore when people share them as if they might be true.

Studying folklore helps us understand what different groups of people valued, feared, and found important enough to remember and share. While we might call some folklore “just stories,” these traditions reveal real truths about human imagination and the questions people ask about their world.