Top Directories

Created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife," the Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American Folk Music.

Wolfgang Mieder's biographical sketch of the University of California Professor of Folklore Archer Taylor, and his work as a paremiologist--collector of proberbs.

Hosts a complete month-by-month record of all the posts made to the discussion-list, from 1990 to the present.

Article by Alby Stone discussing the hand-mill as an image of the cosmos.

A definition and explanation of folklore, with examples.

An "A to Z of Irish Folkore," including seasonal celebrations, folktales, folk sayings, folk cures, leprechaun and fairy beliefs, and the origins of names.

E-text of the book edited by Inoue Nobutaka, Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University.

Contains definitions, basic categories, and listings of subjects studied by folkloristics.

English-language archives of an informative Baltic Folklore journal published by the Folk Belief and Media Group of the Estonian Literary Museum. Material about Estonian shamanism, urban legends, ethnomusicology, popular calendar data, and general folk belief.

Educational, non-profit association founded in June 1976 for the purpose of increasing education and research in the field of folklore studies in all its aspects.

Encyclopedic resource describing and illustrating folkloric talismans and lucky charms from around the world, including horseshoe, swastika, four-leaf clover, rabbit foot, raccoon penis bone, hamsa hand, John the Conqueror root, scarab beetle, and black cat bone.

Definitions of folklore and the related terms folklife and folk arts.

Focuses on contemporary grassroots cultures. Festival information, recordings, events, and resources.

Collected and arranged by Lady Augusta Gregory (1920), e-text from the Internet Sacred Text Archive.

Recounts how beliefs about death and dying brought by colonists from the Northern British Borderlands survive in the Chesapeake region and North Carolina.

Description and pictures of Balinese cremation ceremonies.

Website exploring death according to Hindusim. Includes answers to frequently asked questions, and a photographic exhibit.

Explores the faces of death across art, societies and rituals, science and medicine.

Describes funerary practices in a Chinese village.

Good introduction from the Wyoming Funeral Directors Association site.