Folk Travelers University of North Texas Press Folk Travelers Ballads, Tales, and Talk by Mody C. Boatright, Wilson M. Hudson, and Allen Maxwell, eds.
Any good story travels and keeps on traveling.
As it travels, it both adds and loses, but keeps its shape. If it brings out the characteristic of some individual, illustrating a similar characteristic in him, it will before long find itself attached to another individual, illustrating a similar characteristic in him. Its point, like that of a proverb, a poem, or a text from the Bible, has universal applicability. . . . After a potent traveler becomes familiar to nearly everybody it will stop for a while and rest, but it will not die. It will set out again when there are fresh hearers.