Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Thoms published the letter in 1846. This publication fundamentally altered how humanity understands its own culture by replacing the phrase popular antiquities with the single word folklore.
William Thoms defined folklore as the lore of the folk. The word folk originally meant the rural, poor, and illiterate masses who lived in the countryside.
Folklore manifests in three distinct forms: verbal lore, material lore, and customary lore. Verbal lore includes words and oral traditions, material lore covers tangible objects, and customary lore consists of remembered enactments and expected behaviors.
Iona and Peter Opie systematically collected childlore in their book Children's Games in Street and Playground. Their work documented games, rhymes, and playground songs circulating within an informal pre-literate network of children.
Roger D. Abrahams stated that folklore is folklore only when performed during the second half of the 20th century. This concept revolutionized the field by emphasizing that items of folklore have a sense of control and power that can be capitalized upon through effective presentation.
Walter Anderson articulated the theory of self-correction in the 1920s. He posited that the audience acts as a censor providing negative feedback to narrators who deviate too far from the known traditional text.