Ludowa bajka konkursowa – nowa forma folkloru?

The aim of the article is both to describe the competition folk tale and to attempt to answer the question whether it is a new form of folklore. The material basis for the considerations are the texts sent to the ethnological competitions announced in the years 1955–1966 by Maria Znamierowska-Prüfferowa Ethnographic Museum in Toruń, the Polish Ethnological Society, Toruń Branch, the and Polish Radio in Bydgoszcz. Out of over 6,500 submitted texts, the analysis includes only fairy tales (over 350) which, according to the assumptions of the organizers of the competitions (of which there were 6 in total), were to be a record of traditional peasant texts. Selected stories, mostly realisations of well-known threads described in the Polish folk tale in a systematic order by Julian Krzyżanowski, were analysed, extracting from them common and distinct features in relation to earlier folk texts, in order to characterise the new phenomenon, i.e. competition folk tale.