British_Folklore

Folklore is common to all people. Understanding, appreciating and sharing another culture’s folklore transcends race, colour, class, and creed more effectively than any other single aspect of our lives and, as an element of our past and present society it is something we can all relate to. Its value is no less than any other part of our history and heritage and as such must be documented and preserved as a legacy for our future. So there is no other way to understanding people, their character, past and present but through its linguistic and cultural inheritance. If a person is determined to get a closer acquaintance with the inner world of the English, he should study its language and culture, because only through this he can really get in touch with a strange nation. Finding out some facts, materials on this or that country he would no more than get informed, develop his intellectual abilities and that of the rational memory. But linguistic and cultural education inspires imaginative thinking, influences his emotions and forms his taste. Linguistic materials, and the national folklore is certainly an important part of it, are inseparable from the language: the language itself plays the part of the informational source of the national history and culture. English folklore could be considered a brief look at the not well known mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, though it also has Welsh influences, perhaps evidence of a predominantly non-hostile Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain or it could be because of the Norman's replacement of a great deal of English legends with Britonic ones. Anglo-Saxon paganism refers to the Migration Period religion practiced by the English in 5th to 7th century England. Welsh mythology, the remnants of the Mythology of the pre Christian Britons, has come down to us in much altered form in medieval Welsh manuscripts See also Kingdom of Great Britain Great Britain (Breatainn Mhòr Prydain Fawr Breten Veur Graet Breetain is the larger of the two main islands The British people have a large number of myths and legends that have been passed generation to generation throughout the ages. Most folklore traditions are no longer widely believed. Whereas some traditions were once believed across the whole of England, most belong to specific regions. Thus, in this work the essential role of the English folklore was shown in the development of the English culture, language, forming of the national identity and character and its close connection with the British history.