Folklore Stories: 3 Classic Folk Tales Retold, and Where to Find More

Folklore stories are the tales a community passes down by telling them, long before anyone writes them down: trickster spiders, talking animals, trolls under bridges, a fisherman who stays too long under the sea. Below are three classic folk tales from different parts of the world, retold here in our own words from old public domain collections, with a link to each source so you can read the original. After the stories you'll find where to look for more and what to know if you want to narrate folklore on YouTube.

What counts as a folklore story?

The word "folklore" was coined by the English writer William Thoms in 1846, according to Wikipedia's article on folklore, which describes it as "the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people." Folk tales are one part of that, next to songs, sayings, customs, and jokes.

A few things set folk tales apart from other stories:

• No single author. Collectors like the Grimm brothers or Asbjørnsen and Moe wrote down versions they heard. They didn't invent them.
• Many versions. The same plot shows up in different countries with different names and endings.
• Simple, repeating shapes. Three brothers, three tries, three goats. Repetition makes a story easy to remember and retell.

That last point is why these stories still work out loud. They were built to be told.

Three folklore stories from around the world

1. Anansi and the Pot of Wisdom (Ghana)

This tale comes from West African Folk-Tales by W. H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, published in London in 1917, where it's called "How Wisdom Became the Property of the Human Race."

Long ago, Anansi the spider owned all the wisdom in the world. People came to him every day to ask what to do about their crops, their quarrels, their sick goats. One day the men of the village said something that offended him, and Anansi decided they didn't deserve his wisdom anymore.

So he gathered every bit of it into one big pot and sealed the lid. He would hide it at the top of the tallest tree in the forest, where nobody could reach it.

His son, Kweku Tsin, noticed his father acting strange and followed him into the forest. He watched Anansi tie the pot to his front and start to climb. The pot swung against the trunk. It bumped his knees. Every time he got a little higher, it pushed him back down.

Kweku Tsin watched for a long time. Then he called up, "Father, why don't you tie it on your back? Then you could climb."

Anansi stopped. He had all the wisdom in the world, and his boy had just solved a problem he couldn't. He was so angry that he threw the pot down. It broke on a rock, and the wisdom spilled out and spread across the whole world. That, the story says, is why everyone has a little of it now.

2. Urashima Taro (Japan)

Yei Theodora Ozaki included this one in Japanese Fairy Tales, whose preface is dated Tokyo, 1908.

Urashima Taro was a young fisherman who found some boys poking at a tortoise on the beach. He paid them to let it go and put it back in the sea. The next day, while he was fishing, the tortoise swam up to his boat to thank him and offered to take him to the palace of the Dragon King under the sea.

The palace was made of coral and pearls, and its garden showed all four seasons at once. The Sea King's daughter, Princess Otohime, told Urashima that she had been the tortoise. She asked him to stay and marry her, and he did.

What felt like three days passed. Then he remembered his old parents and asked to go home for a visit. The princess gave him a lacquered box tied with a silk cord and told him never to open it.

Back on his beach, nothing looked right. Strangers lived in his village. When he asked about Urashima Taro, an old man said that was a name from a story three hundred years old. His parents were long gone.

Alone on the sand, Urashima untied the cord and lifted the lid. A small purple cloud drifted out over the sea. In that moment he became very old, and he never found his way back to the palace.

3. The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Norway)

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe collected this tale, and George Webbe Dasent translated it into English in Popular Tales from the Norse, first published in English in 1859.

Three billy goats, all named Gruff, wanted to go up the hillside to eat and get fat. To get there they had to cross a bridge, and under the bridge lived a troll with eyes as big as saucers.

The smallest goat went first. Trip, trap went the bridge. "Who's that tripping over my bridge?" roared the troll, and said he would gobble him up. "Don't take me, I'm too little," said the goat. "Wait for my brother. He's much bigger." The troll let him pass.

The middle goat came next and said the same thing. The troll let him pass too.

Then the big billy goat Gruff came, so heavy the bridge creaked. The troll came up to eat him, and the big goat ran at him, knocked him off the bridge into the water, and walked on up the hill. All three goats got so fat they could hardly walk home.

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Why these tales still work

Notice the shape each tale shares. A problem, three tries or a long wait, then one turn that changes everything. If you've read our guide to story arc, you'll see the classic setup, rising tension, and payoff in all of them. It's a good reason folk tales make easy practice scripts.

Where to find more folklore stories

The safest place to start is with old collections that are in the public domain. In the US, works published in 1930 entered the public domain on January 1, 2026, according to Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Its page covers US law only, so the rules in other countries can differ.

Good places to look:

• Project Gutenberg has free texts of the three collections above, plus many more by region.
• Old national collections. Grimm for Germany, Asbjørnsen and Moe for Norway, Ozaki for Japan, Barker and Sinclair for the Gold Coast (now Ghana).

One catch: a modern translation or a modern picture book of an old tale can still be under copyright even when the story itself is ancient. Work from the old text, and write your own retelling.

Folklore stories as a faceless YouTube niche

Mythology and folklore is one of the niches we cover in faceless YouTube niches that make money, mainly because the supply of tales is huge and many cultures rarely get covered in English. There's no published RPM figure for folklore channels on their own. Our YouTube niche RPM data explains which broad category story content maps to and why sub-niche numbers aren't reliable.

The bigger risk is YouTube's monetization rules. Its channel monetization policies say content that is "mass-produced, generic, repetitive" can lose monetization, and they name AI-generated content using "generic or unoriginal templates" as an example. The same page says reused content copied "without any substantive modifications" isn't eligible either. For a folklore channel, that means:

• Write your own retelling. Don't read a 1917 translation word for word and call it done.
• Add something. Where the tale comes from, how other countries tell the same plot, what changed between versions.
• Vary the format. Mix single tales with themed videos, like "tricksters from four continents" or "underwater kingdoms in folklore."

If you'd rather not draw or film anything, a tool like VidPuff can take a title, write a script you can edit, add narration, a visual for each scene, music and captions, and render a long-form video in documentary or 2D animation style. You still review and change each stage, which is where your own research and retelling go in. For a darker take on the same idea, see how to start a faceless scary story channel.

FAQ

What are some famous folklore stories?

Well-known examples include Anansi the spider tales from West Africa, Urashima Taro from Japan, The Three Billy Goats Gruff from Norway, and the Grimm tales from Germany like Hansel and Gretel. The collections linked above are free on Project Gutenberg.

What is the difference between folklore, myths and legends?

Myths usually deal with gods and how the world began. Legends are told as if they happened to real people in real places. Folk tales are openly made-up stories, often with animals or magic, told for fun or to teach a lesson. All three fall under folklore.

What are the types of folklore stories?

The main types are folk tales (made-up stories told for fun or a lesson, like the Billy Goats Gruff), fairy tales (folk tales with magic, like the Grimm stories), fables (short animal stories with a moral), trickster tales (a clever character who outwits stronger ones, like Anansi), legends (told as if they really happened, like Urashima Taro), and myths (stories about gods and how the world began).

Can I use folklore stories on YouTube?

The old tales themselves are generally free to retell, but a modern translation, book, or video of one may be under copyright. Retell the story in your own words from a public domain source, and add your own research so the video isn't just reused text, which YouTube's monetization policies don't allow.

Are folklore stories good for kids?

Many are, like the Billy Goats Gruff. Some old versions are dark (Urashima Taro ends with him growing old on the beach), so read them first. For gentler options, try our short bedtime stories.