People's Education and Social Status in Folk Songs

Literature is created by the well-known poets and preserved by the learned people. Aru. Alagappan says folk songs are created by lay people and saved by them. They have created folk songs in the form of oral literature in various categories such as lullaby songs, ghummi songs, themmangu songs, sports songs. These songs are about the joys and sorrows of the common people but, they may not be documented. The songs do not have formal grammatical forms or word structure. But it has all the flavors and concepts of the people like pleasure, suffering, waiting, achievement, trial, heroism, love and loss. These songs are the time pieces that show the history of the people of that period. No one knows who composed these songs. Yet, it continues to be preserved by lay people and passed down to the next generation. These songs are still sung in villages. Just like a banana tree grows its offspring, these folk songs also continue to grow along the way. It may vary slightly from time to time in some places, but that does not detract from its authenticity. It is the duty of the learner to document this properly. There is a lot of difference between the world seen by educated people and laymen. The lay people sang the world as they had seen, the world they had to see, in the words they knew, in the ragas they knew, and solved their grief and pain. Even though all the songs are not recorded or written, they are preserved by word of mouth. We should not forget that all these are songs of an uneducated people. However, this article examines the folk songs sung by the lay people and how they gave importance to education and through these songs one can get a clear idea about their social status.