Compare/Contrast Folklore Essay

       I’ve always thought of most folklore being about the same, but it turns out they can be very different. Something that distinguishes one piece of folklore from the next is the culture that it comes from. There are a few very large differences in these cultural works, as well as some similarities. In the following paragraphs I will compare and contrast three folklore's that come from different cultures: “The Arkansas Traveler,” “The Bleeding Sink,” and “Eavesdropper.”
        The Arkansan piece of folklore, the “Arkansas Traveler,” takes place deep in the Ozark Mountains. The characters are a tired, hungry, lost traveler that’s looking for shelter and food and a old grumpy man that wont give the traveler any food or help until he realizes that the lost hungry man can play the fiddle.
       In the American work, “ Bleeding Sink,” a young man begins courageous and stubborn, until he finds a ghost in an old haunted upstairs bathroom of his college dormitory. He ends terrified and a believer of the old ghost story rumors.
       “Eavesdropper,” a classic Canadian folktale, happens on Christmas Eve and like in the Arkansan piece, has an old grumpy man as one of the main characters. Unlike the other pieces of folklore, this one is much more light-hearted and has talking animals as the other characters. This man also begins stubborn and ends a believer when he dies exactly when the cows said he would.        These three different works of cultural literature are different, and yet contain some of the same themes. It amazes me how folklore that comes from different places can have some of the same qualities, and yet be so different at the same time.