Folklore is the indigenous and aboriginal oral cultural artifacts that pervade any people group. They are the stories that are handed down from generation to generation, constantly changing and morphing into whatever the folk require. Folklore attempts to transmit important cultural truths, information about growing up, value systems, and cultural identity. Real folklore is nearly always repetitive, indecent, colloquial and immature. It is, after all, the oral literature of folk.

Fakelore is very different. It is a created artifact, originating with a seminal agenda and is passed to the folk as if it were a legitimate product of the indigenous peoples. It is almost always quaint and “folksy,” utterly lacking in the creepy and absurdity which identifies real folklore.

For example, the Brothers Grimm attempted to write down the real folklore of the Black Forest region of Germany. They interviewed the tellers of stories, the wise women, the hedge wizards, the gypsies and the patriarchs. These stories, like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty or Hansel and Gretle are thoroughly inappropriate for children. Consider that the Hansel and Gretle story involves conscious cannibal taboos. They are all filled with utter nonsense. People sleep for generations in a castle until SB is woken by a magical kiss. A wolf is gutted, then he is filled with fireplace stones, then sewn back together, then drown when he tries to cool the fire in his belly. These are real folktales. They are motivated by a need to terrorize children with the terrible and frightening realities of growing up. They are built upon medieval fears that still terrorize children today: abandonment, being lost, blood, needles, having a parent die, being treated unfairly.

On the other hand, the made-up and fictional “fakelore” is a ploy of those in power to usurp the oral traditions of the folk, and use it for their own nefarious purposes. For example, the Paul Bunyan stories, which are unabashedly capitalist and corporate were created by James Stevens, an ad man from the Red River Lumber Company. They popularized the rapacious tactics of the company while making the loggers seems quaint and fun. The actual Paul Bunyan stories told by loggers are completely lost and subsumed in the fluff created by the advertisers.

Pecos Bill, that icon of the American West, was not a feature of folklore but a creation of the writer Edward J. O’Reilly. there’s nothing wrong in that. Mark Twain and Bret Harte both wrote tall tales and such. The problem arises when the characters of fiction masqeurade as real cultural artifacts, the work of the folk. Pecos Bill is a fine character, but he is a poor representation of the rough and innovative American who was as likely to slaughter buffalo for money as ride broncos for fun.

Modern life, the move away from rural to suburban and urban life, the dependence on mass market imagination, the ubiquitous prevalence of mass media pablum, have made folklore nearly impossible to find anymore. Stories told by grandma that are passed from generation to generation are rare and a treasure that is often neglected. Perhaps the rise of conspiracy theories and the urban legends and the Darwin Award absurdities are our modern equivalent. In any case, fakelore is a just plain shabby imitation of something rustic and pure.