It has become something of a truism in folklore studies that until recently the lore was more often studied than the folk. That is, folklorists concentrated on the folklore – the songs, tales, and proverbs themselves – and ignored the people who transmitted that lore as part of their oral culture. However, since the early 1970s, folklore studies have begun to regard folk performers as people of creativity who are as worthy of attention as are artists who transmit their ideas in writing. This shift of emphasis has also encouraged a growing interest in women folk performers. Until recently, folklorists tended to collect folklore from women on only a few topics such as health and games. In other areas, as Weigle and Farrer have noted, if folklorists "had a choice between a story as told by a man or as told by a woman, the man's version was chosen." It is still too early to tell how profoundly this situation has changed, but one can point to several recent studies in which women performers play central roles. Perhaps more telling is the focus of the most recently published major folklore textbook, The Dynamics of Folklore. Whereas earlier textbooks gave little attention to women and their folklore, this book devotes many pages to women folk performers. Recognition of women as important bearers of folklore is not entirely a recent phenomenon. As early as 1903, a few outstanding women folk performers were the focus of scholarly attention. Bur the scholarship devoted to these women tended to focus primarily on presenting the performer's repertoire. Recent works about women folk artists, however, have been more biographically oriented. Juha Pentikainen's study of Marina Tokalo, a Finnish healer and narrator of folktales, is especially extensive and probing. Though interested in the problems of repertoire analysis, Pentikainen gives considerable attention to the details of Tokalo's life and cultural background, so that a full picture of a woman and her folklore emerges. Another notable work is Roger Abraham's book, which presents a very clear picture of the significance of traditional singing in the life of noted ballad singer Almeda Riddle. Unfortunately, unlike Pentikainen's study, Abraham's study contains little repertoire analysis. These recent books reflect the current interest of folklorists in viewing folklore in context and thus answering questions about what folklore means to the people who use it. One unexpected result of this line of study has been the discovery that women may use the same folklore that men use, but for very different purposes. This realization has potential importance for future folklore studies in calling greater attention to the type of study required if a folklorist wants truly to understand the role folklore plays in a particular culture.