The Future of Folklore Belongs to Our Young Ones

Folklore has always belonged to the next person who hears the story.

Not the person who turned it into a lecture, a society, a brand, a flag, a campaign, or a heavily referenced book with a tiny print run and a very serious cover.

It belongs to the child sitting cross-legged on the floor, wide-eyed, asking what happened next.

It belongs to the teenager who hears an old story and suddenly realises that the monster, the knight, the lost child, the proud king, the strange old woman at the edge of the village, or the fool who thinks he knows everything, is not as distant from their life as they first thought.

It belongs to the young ones who will inherit these stories long after we have finished arguing about them.

And that, I think, is where the future of folklore really lies.

Not in the endless political tug of war. Not in the professionalisation of every old tale until it becomes another fenced-off subject. Not in turning every legend into a regional badge of superiority.

Folklore can be political. Of course it can. It has always been shaped by power, class, place, faith, fear, ownership, language, migration, land and loss (deep breath!). Pretending otherwise would be a complete and utter lie.

But I do sometimes wonder whether the constant politicisation of folklore is of much use to the young people we claim to be preserving it for.

At the last general election, the gap between older and younger voters was stark. Older people were far more likely to vote than the youngest adults. That should bother us. Not because young people are lazy, which is the usual dull accusation, but because many of them clearly do not feel that the systems built around them are speaking to them, listening to them, or offering them much hope.

So perhaps the question is not: how do we use folklore to win arguments? Perhaps the better question is: how do we use folklore to give young people something strong enough to hold onto?

Because that is what stories have always done.

They have warned us. Comforted us. Shamed us. Encouraged us. Entertained us. Frightened us into behaving better. Give us a way to speak about grief, jealousy, courage, cruelty, desire, failure, pride and hope without needing to sit under a strip light and call it a life skills module.

They are not just pretty things from the past.

They are tools.

And we should start handing them back.

Place, Pride and the Problem with Walls

Regional folklore is crucially important.

Of course it is.

Cornwall’s stories are not the same as the stories of Yorkshire, the Highlands, Wales, Ireland, Brittany or the Fens. The land shapes the tale. A mining district, a fishing village, a moorland parish and a granite cliff do not produce the same monsters, saints, giants or ghosts.

There is much pride in that.

There is a sense of place. A sense of belonging. A sense that the ground under your feet has depth. In a globalised world, where corporations often do a better job of shaping taste, identity and desire than families, schools or communities, local folklore can be a way of saying: you are from somewhere. This place had a voice before the algorithm found it.

That is a critical point.

But pride can harden if we are not careful.

A love of place can become a suspicion of anyone from outside it. A local legend can become a border post. A shared story can become a test of purity. Before long, the tale that once brought people closer to the land starts being used to decide who has the right to stand on it.

That is where folklore becomes too small.

The answer is not to flatten everything into one bland, universal soup. The answer is not to pretend that place is not as important as another. The answer is to teach young people that folklore begins locally but has a wide reach.

A Cornish giant can belong to Cornwall and still have something to say to a child from Birmingham, Berlin or Boston.

A piskie can be deeply Cornish and still speak to anyone who has ever felt lost.

A mermaid can rise from Zennor Cove and still carry lessons about longing, love, danger, beauty and the cost of leaving one world for another.

The local is not the opposite of the universal.

It is often the doorway into it.

The Stories We Could Give Them

Imagine a world where young people turned to local lore and old stories when dealing with the problems they face.

Not instead of proper care. Not instead of trained support, therapy, safeguarding or medical help when needed.

But before they fall into the bottomless pit of unqualified online self-help, social media gurus, misery influencers, anonymous comment sections and people selling confidence as a subscription product.

Imagine a teenager struggling with low self-esteem being given stories that show courage is not the absence of fear.

Imagine a child being bullied, learning that every troll has a weakness, every tyrant has a blind spot, and every court needs someone brave enough to speak the truth.

Imagine a young person battling shame, seeing that transformation is one of the oldest human ideas we have. That people change shape in stories because people change shape in life. We grow. We fail. We become strange to ourselves. We return differently.

Imagine schools using local legends not because of a political mandate, but because pupils and parents want them there.

Not as a token “heritage week”.

Not as a colouring sheet.

But as living material.

Arthurian stories alone give us a whole language of values: courage, loyalty, restraint, service, justice, humility, fellowship, honour and the understanding that power without wisdom usually ends in ruin.

The Round Table still resonates today because it is not simply about knights hitting each other with swords. It is about the attempt to build a better order. An imperfect one, certainly, and one that eventually collapses under pride, betrayal and human weakness, but that is exactly why it is highly valuable.

Young people do not need spectacular heroes.

They need complicated ones.

They need stories where good people fail, where brave people make mistakes, where loyalty is tested, where love can be destructive, where pride can bring a kingdom down, and where the attempt to do better still matters.

That is far more useful than another laminated poster telling them to “be kind”.

Looking to the Past to Handle the Future

We often talk as if the future is completely unknown.

It is not.

The tools change. The costumes change. The scale changes. But human behaviour is remarkably repetitive.

Greed is not new. Empire is not new. Monopoly is not new. Exploitation is not new. Nor are courage, resistance, community, humour, tenderness or the small acts of defiance that keep people human.

There is not much we face that we have not faced before in some form.

Amazon is not literally the Dutch East India Company, but there are uncomfortable echoes. Vast trade networks. Control of infrastructure. Pressure on smaller traders. The ability to shape markets rather than simply participate in them. A reach so large that it begins to feel less like a shop and more like a system.

The old chartered companies did not simply sell things. They changed how people lived, worked, traded and understood power. Today’s corporate giants may not sail armed ships under royal charters, but they can still alter the habits of households, the shape of towns, the expectations of workers, the survival of small businesses and the pace at which we consume.

The past does not give us a perfect map.

But it does give us patterns.

That is one of the great uses of folklore and history. They train the imagination to recognise old emperors wearing new clothes.

The dragon might now be an app.

The giant might now be a faceless corporation.

The enchanted mirror might now be a phone screen.

The bargain with the devil might now come with free next-day delivery.

And the child who has been taught to read old stories properly may be better prepared to ask: what is this really asking of me, and what will it cost?

Stone Circles, Screens and the Right to Wonder

Imagine a world where children begged to visit a stone circle rather than spend the entire weekend playing Roblox.

I do not say that as someone who thinks screens are evil. I like films. I like games. I grew up on fantasy and monsters and stories in every form I could get my hands on.

But I have seen the look on my own children’s faces when they see a stone circle and run to it at full pelt. That view makes me cry every single time.

There is something about these places that children understand instantly. They do not need a lecture first. They do not need a certificate or a badge. They do not need to know the exact archaeological phasing, the arguments over ritual use, the excavation history or the preferred academic terminology.

They just feel that something is there.

Space. Scale. Strangeness. Possibility. Even magic.

They run because the place calls to them.

They stand inside it and look around because the stones ask to be looked at and admired.

They ask questions because the landscape has done what all good folklore does: it has opened a door.

And then, sometimes, the adults arrive to close it again.

I have seen the effect these sites can have on people who stand within them. I have also seen the elitism that can gather around them. The quiet sense among some people that they have more right to the stones than others. More right because they know more. More right because they have been coming longer. More right because they use the correct language, hold the correct beliefs, or belong to the correct group.

Pack it in.

The stones do not belong to the loudest person in the car park.

They do not belong only to academics, druids, pagans, archaeologists, locals, tourists, photographers, dog walkers, school groups, spiritual seekers, sceptics, or people with OS maps folded correctly in their bags (although I am always impressed by a neatly folded map!).

They are inherited spaces.

And inheritance is not ownership.

Our job is not to turn these places into private clubs of meaning. Our job is to make sure young people can encounter them with respect, curiosity and wonder.

Teach them not to climb on fragile stones. Teach them not to leave rubbish. Teach them not to damage the ground, light fires, carve initials, or treat sacred and ancient places like backdrops for content.

But do not teach them that they are not allowed to feel something.

Do not tell them wonder requires permission.

Folklore Must Be Given Back

There is a strange tension in folklore.

It is called the lore of the people, yet so often it is taken from people, organised by specialists, argued over by experts, and then handed back with a reading list and a warning not to touch the edges.

I am not against study. Far from it. Good research matters. Careful preservation matters. Context matters. The people who dedicate years to understanding these stories and traditions often do extraordinary work.

But folklore cannot survive if it is only studied.

It has to be used.

Told. Misremembered. Argued over. Reworked. Sung badly. Drawn by children. Acted out in classrooms. Whispered at sleepovers. Walked into landscapes. Turned into puppets, films, games, paintings, festivals and strange conversations at the kitchen table, regardless of class.

It must be allowed to breathe.

The future of folklore will not be secured by making it more exclusive.

It will be secured when a child knows the name of the giant in the next valley. When a teenager sees themselves in an old tale and feels less alone. When a school realises that local legends can teach morality, history, geography, ecology, language and emotional resilience all at once. When parents stop seeing folklore as a quaint extra and start seeing it as part of how young people learn to become human.

The next generation does not need folklore wrapped in a dust jacket or a fancy membership.

They need it placed in their hands.

They need to know that stories are not dead things.

They need to know that the past is not behind them like a closed door. It is under their feet, in their place names, in the stones, in the old roads, in the sea mist, in the warnings, in the jokes, in the monsters, in the songs, and in the values we choose to pass on.

And one day, when we are gone, they will be the ones telling the stories.

So we had better make sure they know they are allowed to.