172 Fun Facts About Folklore

Who coined the word 'folklore' in 1846?

William Thoms coined 'Folk-Lore' in an 1846 letter to The Athenaeum to replace 'popular antiquities'; the letter grew into a regular column, and he went on to found the journal Notes and Queries.

Which American folklorist expanded Antti Aarne's 1910 index of folktale types into the standard reference?

Stith Thompson translated Aarne's index into English and twice enlarged it, so that scholars anywhere can file a tale such as Cinderella under one shared type.

Folklorists call playground rhymes and counting-out games 'childlore' because they are passed on by whom?

Children to other children: the rhymes, dares and rules of tag cross the playground with no adult teaching them, the world Iona and Peter Opie recorded in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959).

In later editions, the Grimms turned Snow White's cruel mother into what?

A stepmother replaced the girl's own mother, who is the jealous villain of the 1812 first edition; the brothers made the same switch in Hansel and Gretel as they revised the tales over seven editions.

Which of these fairy tales is by Hans Christian Andersen rather than from the Grimms' collection?

The Little Mermaid is Hans Christian Andersen's own 1837 tale; in his ending she loses the prince and dissolves into sea foam, while the other three all come from the Grimms' collection.

Paul Bunyan is customarily accompanied by which animal?

Babe the Blue Ox is Paul Bunyan's giant working companion, and in the tall tales the pair's footprints filled with water to make Minnesota's 10,000 lakes.

Paul Bunyan was popularised by a 1916 promotional pamphlet for which kind of business?

A lumber company had its adman William Laughead write the pamphlet, and he turned the loggers' oral tales into the firm's advertising mascot.

Which term did folklorist Richard Dorson coin for invented traditions like the popular Paul Bunyan tales?

Fakelore was Richard Dorson's 1950 coinage for manufactured tales passed off as genuine tradition; he aimed it first at a popular Paul Bunyan book, then at Pecos Bill.

In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga's forest hut stands on what?

Baba Yaga's hut stands on chicken legs and turns to face whoever commands it; she can be villain or helper depending on the tale.

In Russian folktales, Baba Yaga flies through the air riding in what?

A mortar carries Baba Yaga through the air: she drives it on with the pestle and sweeps away her tracks behind her with a broom.

What is the leprechaun's principal occupation in Irish folklore?

The leprechaun is a solitary fairy cobbler, forever making and mending shoes; the tapping of his hammer is said to give away his hiding place.

Before the 20th century, what colour was the leprechaun generally said to wear?

Red was the leprechaun's colour in 19th-century accounts: Samuel Lover gave him a red coat in 1831, and Yeats wrote that solitary fairies wear red, the trooping ones green.

John Henry, the American folk hero, is said to have raced and beaten what?

John Henry beat the steam-powered rock drill through the rock but died with his hammer in his hand, a contest told in dozens of ballad versions.

The Big Bend Tunnel traditionally linked to John Henry's contest is near Talcott in which state?

West Virginia claims the legend at Talcott, where a statue of John Henry stands near the Big Bend Tunnel, though tunnels in Virginia and Alabama have also been put forward as the site of the contest.

What was Johnny Appleseed's real name?

John Chapman, born in Leominster, Massachusetts, in 1774, was a missionary as well as a nurseryman, carrying Swedenborgian writings to the pioneers along with his apple seeds.

Apples grown from Johnny Appleseed's seeds were mostly good for making what?

Hard cider: apples grown from seed vary wildly and are rarely good eating, but they press well, and cider was the frontier's everyday drink.

In the popular image of Johnny Appleseed, what does he wear on his head?

A tin cooking pot is the popular image: an 1871 Harper's article said he wore a tin vessel that served as both cap and mush pot as he planted nurseries from Pennsylvania to Indiana.

The Pied Piper legend is set in Hamelin, a town in which country?

Germany's Hamelin still shows an inscription dating the loss of 130 children to 26 June 1284; one leading theory is that a recruiter drew the town's young away to settle new lands in the east.

The Pied Piper led Hamelin's children away after the town refused to do what?

Pay him: the town broke its promise once the rats were gone, yet the rats joined the story only in the 16th century; the earliest records speak simply of 130 children lost in 1284.

What is banned on Hamelin's Bungelosenstrasse, said to be the last place the children were seen?

Music and dancing are kept off the Bungelosenstrasse, the 'drumless street', out of respect for the lost children; the Pied Piper House there carries the old inscription about the piper.

Robin Hood's outlaws traditionally wear a green cloth named after which English city?

Lincoln green came from the city's dyers, who coloured wool blue with woad and then overdyed it yellow; the outlaws are 'clothed in Lyncolne grene' in the 15th-century Gest of Robyn Hode.

In the Robin Hood legend, which absent king does Prince John try to usurp?

Richard the Lionheart was away on crusade and then held prisoner for ransom, but he joined the legend late: the earliest ballads name the king only as Edward.

Anansi, the trickster of Akan folklore in Ghana, is most commonly depicted as what animal?

A spider is Anansi's usual shape, sometimes with a human head; the tales crossed the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans, and in the Caribbean he is still told of as Anancy.

What does Anansi win from sky god Nyame by capturing dangerous creatures?

All the world's stories were the sky god's until Anansi paid his price, a great snake, a big cat and a swarm of stinging insects, each caught by a trick; that is why they are told as Anansi stories.

In Japanese folklore, a kitsune is a spirit taking the form of which animal?

A fox: kitsune are tricksters said to live for centuries, growing more powerful as they age and often taking the shape of a woman to fool the unwary.

In Japan, rain falling from a clear sky is said to mean that kitsune are holding what?

A wedding: a sunshower is called 'kitsune no yomeiri', and one old explanation is that the spirits make the rain fall so that no human will climb up and see the bridal procession.

In Irish folklore, what does a banshee's wail foretell?

A death in the family is what her wail foretells; Yeats called her an attendant fairy of the old Irish families and said the mourners' keen at funerals imitates her cry.

In Jewish folklore, a golem is a being fashioned from what?

Clay or mud is the golem's usual stuff; in the best-known legend a rabbi shaped one from riverbank clay and brought it to life to defend his community from attack.

In some golem tales, erasing one letter from the word on its forehead leaves what?

Erasing the initial aleph from emet (truth) leaves 'met', meaning death, which deactivates the golem; the word golem itself appears once in the Bible, in Psalm 139.

La Llorona, whose name means 'the Weeping Woman', is said to roam near what?

La Llorona wanders beside bodies of water weeping for the children she drowned; the tale is told to warn and frighten, and some scholars link her to the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl.

The bunyip, said to lurk in swamps and lagoons, comes from the folklore of which country?

Australia's bunyip comes from Aboriginal lore: it was said to roar from the water and to prey on people, women and children above all, so unfamiliar waterholes were best avoided.

Ancient writers describe Aesop, teller of the famous fables, as holding what status in Greek society?

A slave on Samos is how Herodotus describes Aesop; later legend has him win his freedom by his wits, only to be killed by the people of Delphi.

In Alpine folklore, which horned, shaggy figure accompanies Saint Nicholas to punish naughty children?

Krampus swats naughty children with a bundle of birch sticks while Saint Nicholas rewards the good, and each winter young men in horned masks run through Alpine towns in the Krampuslauf.

In the Irish legend behind the jack-o'-lantern, whom does Stingy Jack trick more than once?

The Devil, whom Jack trapped up a tree until he promised never to claim his soul; barred from heaven too, Jack was left to wander with a single burning coal in a hollowed-out lantern.

Folk hero William Tell is said to have shot an apple off his son's head using which weapon?

A crossbow: Tell was made to take the shot for refusing to bow to the bailiff Gessler's hat, set up on a pole, and he kept a second bolt ready for Gessler in case he hit his son.

Which composer's 1829 opera about William Tell was based on Friedrich Schiller's play?

Rossini's Guillaume Tell of 1829 was his last opera, though he lived almost forty more years; the galloping finale of its overture later became the Lone Ranger theme.

In Spanish-speaking countries, the tooth fairy's role is played by Ratoncito Perez, which is what kind of animal?

Ratoncito Pérez is a little mouse, introduced in an 1894 tale that Luis Coloma wrote for the eight-year-old King Alfonso XIII; French children get 'La Petite Souris'.

Nasreddin Hodja, the wise fool of folklore, is traditionally buried in Aksehir, in which modern country?

Turkey's Akşehir shows his tomb and holds a Nasreddin Hodja festival every July; he is the hero of thousands of short comic tales in which the fool usually turns out to be the wise one.

Japanese folk hero Momotaro was born from what?

A giant peach, found floating down a river by an old woman, held the boy in the version told today; in most Edo-period texts the couple ate the peach, grew young again and had him themselves.

Which food, kibi dango in Japanese, did Momotaro share with his animal companions to win their help?

Millet dumplings, kibi dango, were Momotaro's rations; the pun on old Kibi Province later let Okayama claim the hero and sell a sweet of the same name, a link made only in modern times.

The Menehune of Hawaiian tradition build fishponds, roads and temples under which strict rule?

Finish in a single night: the small forest people are said to work only in darkness and to abandon whatever is not done by dawn; Kauai's Alekoko fishpond is the best-known work credited to them.

The jackalope, a Wyoming taxidermist's creation of the 1930s, is a jackrabbit with what added?

Antlers: Douglas Herrick and his brother mounted deer antlers on a jackrabbit and sold it to a hotel in Douglas, Wyoming, a town that went on to issue tourists with joke jackalope hunting licences.

In Washington Irving's 1820 tale, the Headless Horseman is the ghost of what kind of soldier?

A Hessian trooper, a German mercenary whose head was carried off by a cannonball in the Revolutionary War; Irving has him ride out nightly in search of it and race back to the churchyard before daybreak.

After Ray Wallace died in 2002, his family said the famous 1958 Bigfoot tracks were faked using what?

Carved wooden feet were kept by his family, who said they had been used to stamp huge tracks around northern California as a prank, a claim some Bigfoot researchers dispute.

The name chupacabra literally means what in Spanish?

Goat-sucker fits the first reports: in 1995 farmers in Puerto Rico found goats and other livestock dead with small puncture wounds, apparently drained of blood.

The 1934 'surgeon's photograph' of Nessie showed a model head mounted on what?

Toy submarine: fitted with a sculpted head and neck, it passed for the Loch Ness Monster for sixty years, until one hoaxer's confession was made public in 1994.

A 2017 DNA study of hair and other supposed Yeti remains traced all but one sample to which animal?

Bear: the samples came from Himalayan brown, Tibetan and Asiatic black bears, plus one dog, and a bear treading in its own prints leaves a track like a giant human footprint.

Near which town were Mothman sightings reported from 1966 to 1967?

The sightings centred on Point Pleasant, near the Ohio River; John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies linked them to the Silver Bridge collapse of December 1967.

In 1966 a university wildlife biologist told reporters that Mothman witnesses had probably seen which bird?

A sandhill crane, said biologist Robert L. Smith: it stands almost as tall as a man, with a seven-foot wingspan and red around the eyes; later sceptics have favoured a barred owl and its red eyeshine.

The Jersey Devil, the cursed thirteenth child of Mother Leeds, is said to haunt which region of New Jersey?

The Pine Barrens, the sandy pine forest of South Jersey: in the usual telling a weary Mother Leeds cursed the baby before it was born, and the newborn turned monster and flew away.

The wendigo, a winter spirit feared by Algonquian peoples, embodies which taboo?

Cannibalism: in most tellings a person becomes a wendigo when greed or a starving winter corrupts them, and in some the monster grows with every meal, so its hunger is never satisfied.

The term for a skin-walker, yee naaldlooshii, means 'by means of it, it goes' how?

On all fours: the skin-walker is a witch said to take the form of an animal, the opposite of a healer, which is why the subject is rarely discussed with outsiders.

Sailors' tales of the kraken, written up by Bishop Erik Pontoppidan in the 1750s, come from which country's waters?

Norway: Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, described a beast that could be mistaken for an island, with arms long enough to pull down the largest ship; the tales are now put down to sightings of giant squid.

How does a selkie change from animal to human form?

By shedding its skin, the seal coat it wears in the water, a selkie becomes human; steal and hide that skin and it is trapped on land, the plot of many Orkney and Shetland tales.

In Scottish folklore, what does a kelpie do to its riders?

Drowns them: the kelpie waits on the bank as a tame pony, and in some tales whoever touches it sticks fast to its hide; the 30-metre steel Kelpies at Falkirk are named for it.

Ignis fatuus, Latin for 'foolish fire', is which ghostly light of folklore?

Will-o'-the-wisp: the light that flits over bogs and marshes was said to lead night travellers astray, and is now thought to come from gases given off by rotting plants igniting in the air.

In European folklore, what is a fairy child secretly left in place of a stolen human baby called?

A changeling: fairies were said to steal a healthy baby and leave their own sickly child behind, or sometimes only a 'stock', a piece of wood enchanted to look like the missing infant.

A fairy ring is actually a naturally occurring ring of what?

Mushrooms fruit at the outer edge of an underground fungal mat that spreads a little farther each year while its centre dies away, so the ring keeps widening.

In British folklore, what must you leave by the hearth to keep a brownie doing chores?

A bowl of milk or cream left by the hearth keeps a brownie working; offer it clothing, though, and it takes offence and leaves forever.

In sailors' lore made famous by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, killing which seabird curses a ship?

An albatross: the mariner shoots one and his shipmates hang the dead bird round his neck, which is why a lasting burden is still called an albatross.

The redcap goblin of the Anglo-Scottish border soaks its cap in what?

Victims' blood dyes the redcap's hat; he haunts ruined Border castles, and only words of Scripture or the sight of a crucifix drive him off, leaving a large tooth behind.

Black Shuck, the ghostly dog said to have burst into two Suffolk churches in 1577, roams which English region?

East Anglia's Black Shuck is said to have burst into Blythburgh church in a thunderstorm, killing a man and a boy, and the scorch marks on its door are still shown as his.

In 1939 Lady Raglan gave which name to the leaf-sprouting faces carved in medieval churches?

The Green Man was Lady Raglan's name for the foliate heads; in an article in the journal Folklore she argued that they showed a pagan figure living on in church carving.

Herne the Hunter, antlered ghost of a royal forest, first appears in which Shakespeare play?

The Merry Wives of Windsor has the wives lure Falstaff to Herne's oak in Windsor Forest dressed as the horned ghost, where children disguised as fairies pinch and burn him.

Jacob Grimm used what name for legends of ghostly riders crossing the night sky?

The Wild Hunt is the term Grimm's 1835 Deutsche Mythologie popularised for tales of a phantom huntsman and his pack; a sighting was taken as an omen of war or plague, or of the watcher's own end.

Before pumpkins, jack-o'-lanterns were carved from which root vegetables?

Turnips and mangelwurzels were hollowed and carved in Ireland and Scotland; immigrants brought the custom to America, where the native pumpkin proved larger and easier to carve.

In Cornwall and Devon, what are the small mischievous fairy folk traditionally called?

Pixies, or piskies, are the small mischievous fairy folk of Cornwall and Devon, said to lead travellers astray on the moors, hence the phrase 'pixie-led'.

In an old Halloween ritual, a young woman gazing into a mirror in a darkened room hoped to glimpse whom?

Her future husband was the hoped-for face, in a custom shown on Halloween cards of the 1900s; in a version with a candle on the stairs, a skull in the glass meant she would die unwed.

In a legend Dear Abby printed in 1960, a parked couple find what on their car door?

A hook: the radio had just warned of an escaped convict with a hook for a hand, so the pair sped off; the tale was already going round among teenagers in the 1950s.

What did firefighters really catch in the Paris sewers in 1984?

A crocodile, a Nile crocodile later named Eleonore, was found beneath the Pont Neuf and sent to an aquarium at Vannes in Brittany, where her enclosure was made to resemble a sewer.

Britain's wartime wall-peeking doodle Mr Chad merged with which American GI slogan?

'Kilroy was here' was scrawled by American servicemen wherever they went; Mr Chad's own caption was 'Wot, no ...?', a grumble about wartime shortages, and the British drawing ended up beside the American phrase.

Tin miners left the last corner of which food for the knockers, the spirits said to tap in the mines?

Pasties: Cornish miners left a last bite for the knockers, whose tapping was said either to point the way to rich veins of ore or to warn of a coming collapse.

Tall-tale cowboy Pecos Bill is said to have ridden what like a bucking bronco?

A tornado: in one telling he bets a hat that he can ride it and spurs it across Oklahoma until, unable to throw him, the storm rains itself out from under him.

According to legend, Pecos Bill was raised as a feral child by which animals?

Pecos Bill fell from his family's wagon near the Pecos River as a baby and was raised by coyotes, believing himself one until a cowboy set him straight.

Folk hero Casey Jones died in 1900 at the controls of what?

A passenger train: Jones stayed at the brake as it bore down on a train stopped on the track at Vaughan, Mississippi, and was the only person killed; a ballad by engine wiper Wallace Saunders made him famous.

Mike Fink, brawling folk hero of the Mississippi around 1800, worked on what vessel?

A keelboat: Fink ran them up and down the Ohio and Mississippi, was hailed as 'king of the keelboaters', and bragged that he could outrun, outshoot and outfight any man around.

Who collected the Br'er Rabbit tales in the 19th century?

Joel Chandler Harris published Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings in 1880, retelling tales he had heard from enslaved storytellers on a Georgia plantation, rooted in African trickster traditions.

In the Uncle Remus tale, who builds the Tar-Baby to trap Br'er Rabbit?

Br'er Fox fashions the Tar-Baby and sets it by the road; the more Br'er Rabbit strikes the silent doll, the more stuck he becomes.

Which New York-born US president, whose mother came from Georgia, recalled his aunt telling him Br'er Rabbit tales?

Theodore Roosevelt wrote that his aunt Anna Bulloch knew all the Br'er Rabbit stories; his uncle Robert took them down and published them in Harper's, where they fell flat, years before Uncle Remus made them famous.

Coyoteway, like the better-known Blessingway, is a traditional healing ceremony of which people?

Navajo singers perform Coyoteway to make peace with the Coyote People, who are held to send illness when they have been offended; Karl Luckert documented the rite in a 1979 study.

In some Indigenous tellings, the thunderbird creates thunder how?

By flapping its wings the thunderbird makes the thunder, and lightning flashes from its eyes, in tellings from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Lakes.

El Silbón, the whistling lost soul of Venezuelan folklore, murdered which relative?

His father: in one common telling the spoiled son killed him for coming home without the deer he had demanded, and was whipped, cursed and left to wander for ever with the bones in a sack.

The Curupira, Brazilian guardian of the forests, is famous for what unusual feature?

Backwards-facing feet leave tracks that point the wrong way, so anyone fleeing the Curupira runs straight towards him; the Jesuit José de Anchieta wrote of the forest spirit as early as 1560.

The Brazilian trickster Saci is known for having only one what?

Leg: the Saci hops about on a single one, a prankster in a magic cap who gets the blame when manes are found tangled or the dinner burns, and who is said to ride inside whirlwinds.

In Amazonian folklore, which river animal comes ashore at night as a handsome young man to charm women at parties?

The pink dolphin of the Amazon, the boto, is said to become a handsome young man after dark, charm the women at a party and slip back into the river by morning to turn into a dolphin again.

In Slavic folklore, the bannik is the spirit of which place?

The bathhouse, or banya, was the bannik's home: bathers left him water, soap and fir branches, and one round of steam was kept for him and his guests.

In Slavic folklore, which female water spirit, often the ghost of a drowned girl, lures men to their deaths?

Rusalka was her usual name, mavka in Ukraine; in Rusalka Week in early June the spirits were said to leave the water, and swimming was forbidden for fear of being dragged under.

When angered, what does the Slavic vodyanoy do to water mills and dams?

An angered vodyanoy breaks and washes them away, dams and mills alike, so millers, fishermen and even beekeepers made sacrifices to keep him calm.

Koschei the Deathless hides his death inside a needle inside an egg inside what animal?

A duck holds the egg; the duck is inside a hare and the hare in a locked chest, nested hiding places that keep Koschei's death outside his body so he cannot be killed.

The suffix in 'kikimora' is usually linked to the root of which English word?

Nightmare's 'mare' was a goblin that sat on sleepers, and most scholars tie kikimora's -mora to the same ancient word; in Polish lore the mora was a living person's soul that left the body at night as a moth.

What food does the Nordic nisse or tomte expect as a yuletide reward?

Porridge topped with butter is the nisse's Christmas Eve due; in a much-told tale he kills the farm's cow because the butter seems missing, then finds it at the bottom of the bowl.

The beautiful huldra of Scandinavian folklore hides which giveaway feature under her clothes?

A cow's or fox's tail gives the huldra away, though in some regions the sign is a back hollow like a rotten tree; charcoal burners said she watched their kilns and woke them if the fire flared.

In Swedish folklore, the water spirit Näcken sits in streams playing which instrument?

The fiddle is his instrument: he is said to teach his playing to any musician who brings the right offering, well enough 'that the trees dance and waterfalls stop at his music'.

In Scandinavian folklore, some landmarks are said to be trolls that were exposed to what?

Sunlight turns trolls to stone or makes them burst, and legend reads odd rocks as the result: Iceland's Reynisdrangar sea stacks are said to be two trolls caught by daybreak while hauling a ship ashore.

In Icelandic sagas, the draugr typically lives where?

The draugr is an animated corpse that dwells in its burial mound guarding grave goods; Grettis saga's Kárr the Old is a classic example.

Iceland's Yule Cat eats people who fail to receive what before Christmas Eve?

Jólakötturinn, the Yule Cat, devours anyone who gets no new clothing before Christmas Eve, a threat used to make farm workers finish the autumn wool before the holiday.

In Icelandic folklore, who is the child-eating mother of the thirteen Yule Lads?

Grýla is said to cook naughty children in her pot; her thirteen sons come to town one a night from 12 December, leaving small gifts in shoes on windowsills, or a rotting potato for the badly behaved.

On which night does the Italian Befana deliver gifts to children?

La Befana comes down the chimney on the night of 5 January, Epiphany Eve, filling stockings with sweets and leaving coal for bad children.

In the Grimm tale of Frau Holle, snow falls on the world whenever a girl shakes out what?

A feather bed, shaken until the feathers fly, makes it snow, and in Hesse 'Frau Holle is making her bed' became a saying for snowfall; she is the northern cousin of the Alpine Perchta.

Which German peak, the highest in the Harz, is the legendary meeting place of witches on Walpurgis Night?

The Brocken's witches' revel on 30 April, Walpurgis Night, was long acted out in local rites, and the peak gives its name to the Brocken spectre, a climber's giant shadow thrown onto mist.

In legend, Saint Nicholas's whip-carrying helper Père Fouettard murdered three boys while working as what?

An innkeeper or butcher, depending on the telling, he robbed and killed three boys on their way to boarding school; Saint Nicholas brought them back to life and took the killer into his service.

The Heinzelmännchen, gnomes who did the townsfolk's work by night, belonged to which German city?

The Heinzelmännchen did Cologne's work by night until a tailor's wife scattered peas to trip them and catch a glimpse; they left the city for good, as August Kopisch's 1836 poem tells.

Whose 1782 poem 'Erlkönig', later set to music by Schubert, made the child-stealing elf king famous?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took the name from Herder, who in 1778 had turned the Danish 'elf-king' into Erlkönig, 'alder king', a slip usually put down to mistranslation.

The Lorelei, a rock where a siren was said to lure boatmen to their deaths, towers over which river?

The Rhine narrows at the Lorelei rock, long a wrecking spot; the siren herself is modern, created by Clemens Brentano in an 1801 ballad and made famous by Heinrich Heine's 1824 poem.

The most famous golem legend involves which 16th-century rabbi of Prague?

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal, is said to have made the golem to defend his city's Jews; the tale was the basis for Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel The Golem.

In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is the restless soul of a dead person that does what to the living?

Possesses their bodies and clings on: S. An-sky's play The Dybbuk made the spirit famous, though he died a month before its Warsaw premiere in December 1920.

The ghoul, a flesh-eating demon of graveyards, comes from which folklore tradition?

Arabian folklore counted the ghūl among the jinn: it was said to lure unwary travellers out into the desert wastes, then kill and eat them.

The legendary roc is consistently depicted as large enough to carry off which animal?

Elephants were its prey: Marco Polo wrote that the roc seized them in its talons, carried them high and dropped them to smash on the ground before feeding.

Which red-faced, long-nosed goblins of Japanese folklore dress as mountain hermits?

Tengu wear the robes of the yamabushi, mountain ascetics; famed as swordsmen, they are said to have taught the young hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune to fight.

A kappa is severely weakened if what happens to the 'dish' on its head?

Its water is spilled and the kappa loses its strength, which is why bowing to one, so that it bows back, is the classic escape.

Japanese oni are typically shown in tiger-pelt loincloths, carrying which weapon?

An iron club, the kanabō, is the oni's weapon, and it gave Japanese the saying 'like giving a kanabō to an oni': handing more strength to someone already strong.

How can one survive an encounter with Japan's Slit-Mouthed Woman, Kuchisake-onna?

Say she looks 'average' and she is confused long enough for you to run; answer 'Am I beautiful?' with no and she kills you, with yes and she slits your mouth to match her own.

Where does the Japanese ghost girl Hanako-san lurk?

School toilets are her haunt: children dare each other to knock three times on the third stall of the third-floor girls' toilet and ask whether Hanako-san is there.

Which shape-shifting raccoon dog of Japanese folklore is shown with a sake bottle and straw hat?

The tanuki is shown with a straw hat, a sake bottle and a promissory note, and is said to drum on its own round belly; its pottery statues are seen all over Japan.

Which Chinese goddess floated to the Moon after drinking an elixir of immortality?

Chang'e swallowed the elixir of immortality given to her husband, the archer Hou Yi, and floated up to the Moon; older tellings say she stole it, later ones that she was keeping it from a thief.

How many tails does the Korean gumiho have?

Nine tails mark the gumiho, as they do its Chinese and Japanese cousins; in Korean tales it is usually a deceiver that takes the form of a beautiful woman.

Korean dokkaebi are formed by the spiritual possession of what?

Old discarded objects, such as a worn broom or a bloodstained tool, turn into dokkaebi when a spirit possesses them, unlike ghosts, which come from the human dead.

The shape-shifting, flesh-eating aswang haunts the folklore of which Southeast Asian country?

The Philippines' aswang is said to pass for an ordinary neighbour by day, then turn into a beast after dark and go hunting for human prey.

How is a manananggal traditionally destroyed while it hunts?

Salt or ash on its lower half, left standing while the winged torso hunts, stops the manananggal joining itself together again, and sunrise then destroys it.

The Philippine tree giant kapre is commonly depicted doing what in the branches?

Smoking a huge cigar high in an old tree, the kapre is said to play tricks on travellers passing below, leaving them confused and lost.

The Philippine tikbalang has the head and hooves of which animal?

A horse's head and hooves top the tikbalang's gangly body; it makes travellers lose their way and walk in circles, and the folk cure is to turn your shirt inside out.

The Thai krasue manifests as a floating woman's head trailing what?

Her internal organs dangle glowing beneath the floating head, so householders plant spiky fences or thorny bamboo: the krasue is said to fear snagging its entrails.

Which long-haired female ghost of Malay and Indonesian folklore shares its name with a city on Borneo?

Pontianak in West Kalimantan takes its name from the ghost: the story goes that its founder had to drive the spirits from the site with cannon fire before he could build there.

A toyol, the undead infant of Malay folklore, is typically used by its master for what?

Stealing riches is its job: the keeper sends the toyol to pilfer cash from neighbours, though it is said to take only part of the money and to forget its errand if a toy is left beside it.

In Indian folklore, which beings are part human, part serpent, and guard treasure underground?

Nagas, the serpent beings of Indian lore, dwell in the watery underworld Patala guarding jewels; the naga Vasuki served as the churning rope in the Samudra Manthan myth.

In the Vetala tales, which legendary king tries to capture the corpse-inhabiting spirit?

King Vikramaditya carries the vetala from a tree in the Baital Pachisi, twenty-five tales each ending in a riddle the king must answer or lose his head.

The Romanian strigoi is linked etymologically to the Latin strix, associated with which bird?

Owl is the usual reading of the Romans' strix, a night bird said to feed on human flesh and blood; the same root gave Romanian strigoi and Italian strega, 'witch'.

The word 'bogeyman' may derive from Middle English bugge, which meant what?

A frightening spectre or hobgoblin was a bugge, the word that also sits inside bugbear; dictionaries suspect the same spook helped shape 'bug' for an insect.

In the German lore that became Groundhog Day, which animal's shadow was usually watched on Candlemas?

The badger, the Dachs, was the usual Candlemas forecaster in German lore, though some regions watched other animals; Pennsylvania's German settlers swapped in the groundhog, plentiful in their new home.

At which spot does Punxsutawney Phil emerge each February 2?

Phil is brought out on Gobbler's Knob, a clearing outside Punxsutawney, by the top-hatted Inner Circle, whose president claims to translate his forecast from 'Groundhogese'.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of which day?

Friday the 13th has its own tongue-twister of a phobia; a 1907 novel by Thomas Lawson, in which a broker uses the date to panic Wall Street, may have helped spread the superstition.

By North American tradition, which of a rabbit's feet is the lucky one?

The left hind foot is the lucky one in North American hoodoo tradition, ideally from a rabbit shot in a cemetery, in some versions under a full moon or by a cross-eyed man.

Around the eastern Mediterranean, the classic glass bead worn against the evil eye is which colour?

Blue eye-shaped beads, known as nazar, are meant to stare the curse back; one that cracks is said to have taken a strong evil eye in its wearer's place.

Which hand-shaped amulet is a famous talisman against the evil eye?

The hamsa, an open palm often with an eye at its centre, takes its name from the Arabic for 'five', after the fingers; Muslims know it as the Hand of Fatima and Jews as the Hand of Miriam.

Folklorist Steve Roud traces a modern good-luck superstition to which children's game?

In Tiggy Touchwood, a 19th-century tag game, players were safe from capture while touching wood; Roud argues the adult superstition grew from that rule.

Which British Columbia body of water is home to the monster Ogopogo?

Okanagan Lake's sacred water spirit, N'ha-a-itk to the Syilx people, was renamed Ogopogo by settlers, who took the name from a comic English music-hall song.

The Bell Witch haunting of 1817 to 1821 took place in which US state?

Tennessee's Bell Witch plagued John Bell's farm at Adams from 1817, speaking, praying and mimicking the neighbours; the tale says even Andrew Jackson rode out to investigate.

Australia's Yowie is the local counterpart of which North American legend?

Bigfoot's Australian cousin is a tall, hairy, ape-like figure with roots in Aboriginal oral tradition; Kilcoy in Queensland embraced a 1979 sighting and put up a Yowie statue.

The hoax 'drop bear' is a predatory version of which animal?

The drop bear is a fictional carnivorous koala that falls from trees onto tourists; the Australian Museum's deadpan entry even compares it to the extinct Thylacoleo.

The taniwha, a water-dwelling guardian or monster, belongs to the traditions of which people?

Māori tradition holds that some taniwha kill and eat people while others guard a tribe, which offers them gifts and prayers; they lurk in deep pools, rivers and sea caves.

The tokoloshe, a mischievous dwarf-like spirit that can make itself invisible, belongs to which region's folklore?

Southern Africa's Zulu lore says it vanishes by drinking water or swallowing a stone; people raise their beds on bricks so the short creature cannot reach them at night.

By one leading account, Africa's water spirit Mami Wata took shape from 15th-century encounters with what?

European mermaid imagery, met through early trade with Europe, is where scholar Henry Drewal traces her; an 1880s German print of a snake charmer later became her best-known portrait.

Mokele-mbembe is a legendary water-dwelling creature of which river basin?

Mokele-mbembe is said to haunt the Congo Basin, especially Lake Tele in the Republic of the Congo; several expeditions were funded by young-Earth creationists hoping for a living sauropod.

In 1995 a mass panic over Popobawa, a bat-winged night spirit, swept which Indian Ocean islands?

Zanzibar's Popobawa, Swahili for 'bat-wing', is said to attack people in their beds, so during panics families sit up all night outdoors around a fire.

Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, is depicted as the granddaughter of which gift-bringer?

Ded Moroz gained his granddaughter late: Snegurochka, a 19th-century fairy-tale heroine, joined him only when the Soviet Union brought back New Year celebrations in 1935.

In the Russian fairy tale, Ivan Tsarevich rides a grey wolf on his quest to capture which creature?

The Firebird had been stealing the king's golden apples, and Ivan managed to snatch only one glowing feather; the wolf that ate his horse then carries him on the hunt.

Alebrijes, bright fantastical creatures first made by Pedro Linares after a fever dream, are a folk art of which country?

Mexico City papier-mâché maker Pedro Linares said the creatures came to him in 1936 while he lay ill, calling out the word 'alebrijes'; Oaxacan carvers later remade them in copal wood.

In Dutch tradition, Sinterklaas arrives each November by steamboat from which country?

Spain is his home in Dutch lore: he lands by steamboat in mid-November, weeks before gift night, and old songs warned that naughty children would be carried back there in a sack.

In the tale made famous by the American novel Hans Brinker, a boy plugs a leaking dike with what?

His finger holds back the water all night until help comes; the tale was little known in the Netherlands until tourists came asking about it, so Spaarndam put up a statue of the boy in 1950.

Among which group did the Easter Hare originate as a judge of children's behaviour?

German Lutherans' Easter Hare brought coloured eggs only to well-behaved children; German settlers carried the 'Oschter Haws' to Pennsylvania in the 1700s, where children built nests for its eggs.

Which department store published the 1939 booklet that introduced Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

Montgomery Ward gave away 2.4 million copies of Robert L. May's Rudolph booklet in 1939; May's brother-in-law Johnny Marks wrote the 1949 song.

Werewolf trials first emerged in the early 15th century in what is now which country?

Switzerland's Valais and Vaud held the first werewolf trials in the early 15th century; in a famous 1692 case in Livonia, an old man named Thiess claimed werewolves went down to Hell to fight witches.

In Haitian folklore, a zombie is reanimated by which kind of sorcerer?

A bokor, a Vodou sorcerer who works with both hands, is said to raise the zombie; William Seabrook's 1929 The Magic Island introduced the idea to Western readers.

The German word poltergeist literally means what?

Poltergeist joins poltern, 'to make a racket', with Geist, 'ghost', so 'noisy ghost'; sceptics explain most cases as adolescents playing tricks on adults.

In the tale of Rhodopis, often called the first Cinderella story, an eagle drops her sandal before which land's king?

Egypt's king, sitting in judgment at Memphis, was so struck by the sandal that he sent men through the country to find its owner and married her, as the Greek geographer Strabo tells it.

In the Grimms' Little Red Riding Hood, what is the wolf's belly filled with after the girl is cut free?

Heavy stones weigh the wolf down, and he drops dead when he tries to run; Perrault's 1697 version, the first in print, has no rescue at all and ends with the girl eaten.

Which composer's opera Hänsel und Gretel premiered in 1893?

Engelbert Humperdinck began it as a handful of songs his sister Adelheid Wette asked for, for her children to perform; the full opera premiered at Weimar in 1893 under Richard Strauss.

In Rumpelstiltskin, what does the miller's daughter first give the imp for spinning straw into gold?

She gives her necklace on the first night, her ring on the second, and on the third, with nothing left, promises her firstborn child.

Charles Perrault led which faction in the great literary Quarrel of the 1680s?

Perrault championed the Moderns against Boileau's Ancients, opening the quarrel with his 1687 poem Le Siècle de Louis le Grand; his 1697 tales include Puss in Boots.

Which Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale loosely inspired Disney's Frozen?

The Snow Queen was a straightforward villain in Disney's drafts until the song 'Let It Go' made her sympathetic, and the script was rewritten around the new Elsa.

What is the name of the mythical wealth-making machine in Finland's Kalevala?

The Sampo, forged by the smith Ilmarinen, grinds out flour, salt and gold; the heroes' voyage north to Pohjola to steal it back is one of the epic's main dramas.

Which Simon & Garfunkel hit is a traditional English ballad that Paul Simon learned from folk singer Martin Carthy?

Scarborough Fair is tied to 'The Elfin Knight', No. 2 of the 305 ballads Francis James Child catalogued; Carthy taught it to Paul Simon in London in 1965, a year before the hit.

Which Library of Congress collection did Alan Lomax direct?

Alan Lomax ran the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song from 1937 to 1942, recording singers on aluminium and acetate discs alongside John Lomax.

Which Russian scholar's Morphology of the Folktale reduced fairy tales to 31 recurring plot 'functions'?

Vladimir Propp drew his 31 functions from 100 tales in Afanasyev's collection; published in 1928, the book went largely unnoticed in the West until its English translation of 1958.

Andrew Lang's tale anthologies, edited with his wife, are known by what collective name?

Lang's Coloured Fairy Books, twelve volumes from the Blue Fairy Book of 1889 to the Lilac of 1910, were largely translated and retold by his wife Leonora Blanche Lang.

In Washington Irving's tale, for how many years does Rip Van Winkle sleep in the Catskills?

Rip sleeps 20 years, straight through the American Revolution, after drinking with the ghostly Dutch crew of Henry Hudson at their game of ninepins.

The hodag, a horned beast 'captured' in an 1890s logging-country hoax, became a town mascot in which US state?

Wisconsin's Rhinelander adopted the hodag after Eugene Shepard showed a 'live' one at the county fair, twitched by hidden wires; he confessed only when Smithsonian scientists said they were coming to inspect it.

Which English city did Lady Godiva ride through naked, according to legend?

Godiva rode through Coventry to win relief from her husband Leofric's taxes; later versions added a tailor, Tom, who peeped and was struck blind, giving us 'Peeping Tom'.

In the legend, what calls the runaway Dick Whittington back to London?

The sound of Bow bells seemed to say 'Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London'; the real Richard Whittington was a knight's son who was never poor, and nothing shows he kept a cat.

Juan Ponce de León was supposedly told by Native Americans that the Fountain of Youth lay in which land?

The legend places the fountain in Bimini, a land the Taíno supposedly described; tales of youth-restoring waters go back to Herodotus and the Alexander Romance, long before the 1513 voyage.

The El Dorado legend is tied to gold offerings in which sacred body of water in Colombia?

At Lake Guatavita the new Muisca ruler was said to be coated in gold dust and to rinse it off while offerings sank; the golden Muisca raft sits in Bogotá's Museo del Oro.

The Slender Man creepypasta was created in June 2009 on which internet forum?

Eric Knudsen, posting as Victor Surge, created Slender Man in a June 2009 Something Awful forum thread of doctored paranormal photographs.