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In a discussion of "tradition" and the applicability of the tenn lO personal narrative,
Sandra Stahl argues that what makes this fonn of expression a folklore genre is the
"traditional attillldes," the "cultural evaluations" which underlie the over! content of this
seemingly idiosyncratic story.l These attitudes, she feels, represent the poilll or "meaning"
of the genre as beliefs do in memorates.2 In agreement with Lauri Honko's proposition
regarding beliefs. Stahl suggests that attitudes are abstract entities or the unverbalized
segment of a group's worJdview. She proposes that the personal narrative is the mOSI
likely vehicle and maybe the primary narrative genre for expressing traditional attitude.3
Elli K6ngiis Maranda has analysed the structural rules (hat generate riddles, and
interpreted the relationship between these rules and the world views of those who
manipulate these rules. 4 The function of riddles and riddling thus would be to question the
validity of the cultural system. To this, Michael Lieber has objected that a people's
cognitive order could not possibly be put in doubt as it founds its logic and understanding
of reality.S For him, rather than question the established order with a view to deny its
validity, riddles merely explore it, and through this process reaffirm its integrity. So it
appears that identifying cognitive categories is one thing, interpreting them another.
The anthropOlogical and folkloristic literatures on worldview, it appears from this
survey, show no lack of insights, theoretical or pragmatic, and cenainly not as regards
ballad and folksong. These various comributions, strikingly, hardly diverge either in their
conceptions or recommendations for tackling this delicate object: all agree on the need to
approach worldview from a holistic perspective articulating textual ,md contextual data. If
world view is a unified system of meanings, and cultural expressions each yield but a pan
of this message, an ethnographic and multigeneric approach appears in order for the
investigation of the moral affinities between a ballad corpus and its cultural complex.
Being "the stmcture of things," worldview appears to be soughtlhe most adequately along
slnJcturallines.
1Sandra K.D. Stahl, "The Personal Narrative in Folklore," Journal 01 the Folklore In.Hi/u/e
14 (1977),9-29.
2For a discussion of the relationship of belief to memorate, the reader is referred to Lauri
Honko, ftMemorates and the Study of Folk Beliefs,ft Journal of lire Folklore InJ/i/Ule I
(t964): 5-19.
3Stahl 22.
4 Elli K6ngas Maranda, 'he Logic of Riddlcs," Structural AnalyslJ 01 Oral Tradilion, ed.
Pierre Maranda and Elli KOnglls Maranda (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania p. 1971).
5 Michael Lieber. "Riddles, Cullural Catcgories, and World View," Journal 01 American
Folklore 89 (1976): 255-65.
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