First of all, I abhor the term "fakelore" because it carries with it a judgment of a common, persistent aspect of culture, and we should all be suspicious when an element of culture is being held up for judgement.

American folklorist Richard Dorson took aim at Paul Bunyan, in particular, when he put forward the term "fake lore" in 1950. It was widely used by folklorists for a few years until the tide began to turn. The Paul Bunyan story was crafted to promote logging on the north central region and to promote a certain image of what an American hero was all about: robust and honorable, but of course also white and male.

There is a new book out that deals with this sort of material in an elegant way - in my opinion: Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey A. Tolbert, eds. 2016. The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World. . Foster and Tolbert have invented a new term - "folkloresque" - to capture and place in perspective a wide variety of aspects of culture that deal with folklore or have the appearance of folklore. While I don't care for invented terms, I would rather see the invented term "fakelore" replaced by "folkloresque" so we can remove any judgment and move forward.

Here is something I wrote about the term in a recent post on a website that tried to take a more generous stance toward the term:

As I have indicated, my main problem with the term is its sense of judgment. You cite some good material that expresses that concern. The romantic drive of the early folklorists sought to weed out the “bad” elements so that it would be possible to consider the “genuine” tradition, free of outside influences. It was an absurd goal because folklore has always thrived on all sorts of influences. It is by its nature dynamic and creative, and absolutely everything is grist for its mill.

For example, imagine European folklore without the Bible and its influences. The romantic folklorists hoped to do just that, to consider the tradition without that imported influence so they could clearly examine the traditions and beliefs of Iron Age people. And yet, remove the Bible and Christianity from European medieval and post-medieval folklore and it would be very much poorer. Should the religion not have come north, the oral tradition would have been vibrant and rich and it would have been different, but it would have changed one way or another. What the Bible introduced was a literary influence, but it did not make the folklore shabbier in any way. It simply affected it. What it left behind was no less folklore, nor was it weakened. The interplay between the written and the oral word is millennia old, enriching both, and we should not regard that process with judgment.

Then there is the question of deliberate introductions and what that means. The director at the Historic Fourth Ward School Museum in Virginia City, Nevada, where I did a lot of work, abhorred stories about ghosts in her building (there were only a few “real” snippets of “sightings”, but in general the building was devoid of any ghost tradition). In spite of her reluctance and as part of the evening’s entertainment, she told a story she invented one Halloween about the ghost of a girl at the top of stairs. Ever since that one telling, the community has told the story about this ghost as a true, living tradition. People come and ask about the ghost and belief in her is widespread. The introduction of the story was not some cynical manipulation of local folklore, but it did foster a real tradition, which is no less now a part of local folklore. It is rare when we can see the actual point of origin of a tradition, but seeing it and understanding how this came about does not diminish the tradition. If anything, it lends insight into how the process works and into how much the folk simply needed there to be a ghost inside that old school. The smallest spark ignited the flame.

So, was the director of this school engaged in “fakelore”? That would seem to me to be an unfortunate way to characterize it since the term seems so judgmental and the invention of this story was so innocent. Here, I believe, we are wiser to turn to that new book (and term) “Folkloresque.” This new term and the concept it describes can be used to frame a number of things. These include the adaptation of material from living folklore into a new medium, but it also describes those who create new material after the fashion of folklore. Hans Christian Andersen did this, after all, but I don’t think he deserves the judgment of a term like “fakelore.” The same is the case with Tolkien. And that innocent museum director with her Halloween story. They crafted stories in the fashion of folklore, and sometimes these flow back into oral tradition. Many Irish storytellers took up Snow White after Disney’s movie (which was many steps removed from “real” folklore) appeared on the screen in 1936, but when a storyteller sat by the hearth and told the story, the act was no less one of folklore.

When Dorson created the term fakelore, he sought a purity in oral tradition that is illusive and never really existed. To employ the term is to imply that the person who uses it embraces that romantic goal or is unaware of the issues embedded within it.

In another post on this subreddit, I wrote the following:

American folklorist Richard Dorson (1916-1981) invented the term "fakelore" in 1950 to describe just the sort of thing represented by Pecos Bill - namely the literary invention of something that seems like oral tradition, which was then passed off as real folklore, but which never had roots in anything that was transmitted orally by the "folk."

Although it was once very much in vogue, the term has fallen out of favor with folklorists for several reasons. The first fundamental problem is that it does not given proper credit to the very real circumstance involving a steady flow between oral tradition and literature. For as long as people have written things down oral tradition has affected what was written and what was written has affected oral tradition.

The term fakelore implies that "really good folklore" is something that has emerged purely from the oral tradition without being tainted by what was written. But if that is the definition for the ideal expression of folklore, then one is not likely to find that Holy Grail. Even if the effect of literature on an aspect of oral tradition in a literate society is not apparent, at some point it likely existed. In addition, the term fakelore implies that one aspect of culture (a "pure" expression of folklore) is superior to another (a literary story crafted to seem like oral tradition). We should not be in the business of judging elements of culture in this or in any other way. The fact is, every source requires source criticism. Any historian just like any folklorists whose been around the block sufficiently has been "taken in" by a source at one point of another. We have assumed the source to have a level of integrity or a sort of context that is not borne out over time. The story of Pecos Bill is not fake or of limited value. It is an interesting literary attempt to create what might seem to be an oral tradition for a region. There is no problem with the story as long as one is not "taken in," as long as one does not see in something a thing that is not there.

The Donation of Pepin is a fascinating document that reveals a great deal. Source criticism puts it in perspective and the astute historian knows not to take it on face value. But the document has value. Similarly, the astute folklorist must attempt to apply similar source criticism for sources available for study. An old friend of mine, the late Warren d’Azevedo (1920-2014) once told me that when he was doing ethnographic work with the Washoe Indians showed him something they called the Eagle Dance, a performance that involved wings and the appearance of the eagle wheeling around. It was a beautiful tradition, and Warren was really impressed because neighboring tribes did not seem to have it. He was asking the elders about it, and they said that a movie director had taught it to them for a film he was making. They liked it and so they kept it. On one level this could be regarded as fakelore, but in fact is was a very nice tradition that just happened not to have very deep roots. With the right perspective, an aspect of culture is merely an aspect of culture. It is neither good nor bad. The only thing that can be bad is not fully understanding its context.